The Mystery of John Jasper
by RomanDeLaRose
Summary: Whatever happened to Edwin Drood? Does the answer lie in John Jasper's past?
1. Chapter 1

**Note on setting: Dickens serialised _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ in 1870 but the book mentions at one point that it is set at an indefinite time in the near-ish past, namely before the railway reached Cloisterham. Rochester railway station opened in the 1850s, so I have gone along with the recent TV drama, which places events in December 1845.**

The birth of a girl, at Kensington Palace, in the spring of 1819, the occasion of national rejoicing.

The birth of a boy in the late October of that same year, not thirty miles from the Princess's cot, the occasion only of sorrow to all concerned, including, if the indignant protest of his new-minted lungs could be considered, the child itself.

How the world looks different according to the vagaries of circumstance; the first face that greets the child's eyes can weep tears of joy or of despair. Is the baby's future given its direction there and then?

It is not known whether Queen Victoria's blurred infant eyes looked up into love or indifference, but the abovementioned boy found human response only from the fatigued old midwife who first held him aloft and declared him alive and of the male sex.

"Oh, put it away from me," weeps the white-faced girl in the bed. "I don't want to see it."

"If you wants a wet-nurse," says the midwife to the stooping woman beside her, "I've a cousin as charges low rates. She'll keep the babe for a year if you can give her fifteen shillings down payment."

The old woman mumbles something about writing to the grandparents, who have the funds she herself lacks.

"Mind," she says, looking dispassionately down at the squalling boy, "they already sends me a reg'lar remittance for clearing up of this mess for 'em."

"London folks, bain't they?"

"Aye, clergy, too."

"Well, I never. Goes to show, don't it? The best families and all. Still, you wants to get that wet-nurse by the looks of 'er. She's weak and she ain't going to have much milk for 'un, even if she wants to feed him herself."

"Maybe best for all if the little scrap starves," says the old woman bleakly.

"Well, that's up to His tender mercies, but meanwhiles we must do our best for'n. Who's the sire, do they think?"

If the newly-delivered mother minds having her affairs discussed before her in this manner, she doesn't show it. Perhaps she is lost to consciousness now, escaping her hated reality on a sweet sea of dreams.

"Young man from the choir at St Paul's, so they say. Of course, he won't put his name to it. But he was a favourite at the girl's house, gave her music lessons, he did. Her parents won't have music in the house now."

"Terrible shame." The midwife casts a compassionate eye, twitching a little from tiredness after a labour of almost two days, over mother and child.

"She came down to me in the spring, she did. They told everyone she was took ill and prescribed country air. Lovely girl, too, pretty little thing. Could have done well for herself if only…"

The women sigh in unison.

"You'd better take him," speaks the elder, her tone resigned. "I'll get your cousin the money. If she can keep him a year and bring him back once he's walking, I think that'll work best all round."

The midwife picks the boy up and wraps him in a shawl.

He has worn himself out with bawling and lies against her chest, gasping and trying to chew on a finger he can never quite get into his mouth.

"Famished, poor mite," she says. "Don't you fret, pickle. You won't go hungry long. Say bye bye to your mama. Bye bye. See you soon."

She picks up his little wrist and makes his hand wave at the sleeping girl on the bed.

He finds strength for another plaintive yell.

The elderly lady hands over a jingling purse and the midwife, after some cursory instructions relating to post-natal care, walks out into the autumn night with her bundle of profit.

(_November 1820)_

It was a little over a year before the boy returned to the place of his birth.

He would not have recognised it, of course, and even if he had been more than a day old on his departure, the place was so wreathed in mist and generally bowed down and depressed by the drab quality of the November daylight that his recollections might not have matched this reality.

It was a low, unassuming building, the red bricks bearing whitish patches all over where salt had blown in from the marshes close at hand. The windows wanted new frames, for the rot had set in and the leaded glass was slowly breaking loose of its moorings. The door must be opened with a kick and shut with a shove, and the chimney sat at an angle a casual observer might call jaunty, though to the cottage's occupants it was detestably awry.

Some scrappy looking fowls clucked pettishly at the building's margins, to the chagrin of a half-starved goat tethered to the fence post.

The little boy, set down by his nursemaid at his insistence, took three wobbly steps towards the horned bleater and then fell flat on his front. This, it seemed, was no startling occurrence, for he simply stood up again and made another run for the goat.

"Ba," he said, turning round and explaining his enthusiasm for this creature to his companion. "Go ba."

"Yes, it's a goat," she said, scooping him back up before his bonnet strings strayed between the teeth of the mangy beast.

As they picked their way through the high weeds, the door was yanked open and a sullen girl of thirteen or so came out on to the front step. She would have been pretty if she could have found some apples for her cheeks or brightness for her eyes, but no such accoutrements had been located and she had the same thin, pinched look as her surroundings, a famished girl in a famished land.

"Aunt Hetty's abed with her rheumatism," she said. "Come in."

She did not look at the child, who clung to his nurse and cried as they bent under the low lintel and entered the cottage beyond.

The house was two rooms only – one for living in and one for sleeping in, with a little cookhouse shed out the back.

The living room clung to pretensions of gentility – the furniture was good, but old and shabby, and the fabrics were all faded to a remarkable degree. But it was comfortable and clean, and a little cabinet piano, perhaps forty or fifty years old, took pride of place in the front corner.

The nursemaid took a seat, the child on her knee, while the girl offered refreshments, in a dull, dutiful way.

"No, my love, I'll not keep you. I've five babes to go home to, all hungry for everything I can give them. This one has passed his first birthday and now you must take him back, for I don't keep them beyond that age, no matter how attached I might become."

"Are you attached to _him_?" asked the girl, looking for the first time at the boy in his cheap but serviceable woollen gown and cap.

"He's surprised me, Miss. I didn't think he'd last, but he's got a spirit in him. I think he willed himself to live. Look at him now, healthy as anything. I did right by him, Miss, I hope you'll agree."

Indeed, the child had overcome an exceptionally adverse opening to his life, and not because his nursemaid had 'done right' by him. She was correct to attribute his thriving to a certain native life force, for many other babies of his exact weight and condition would scarcely have survived the daily neglect and indifference shown to this boy.

"We're obliged to you," said the girl, without meaning it.

"You'd best take him, then," said the nursemaid, standing up and proffering the child.

"Oh, set him down. He can walk, can't he?"

"Just. Took his first steps a fortnight since."

She put him down on the rug and watched him crawl towards a large marmalade cat asleep by the hearth.

"I'll…be off, then, Miss." The nursemaid, although no natural mother, seemed perplexed at the girl's low spirits on seeing the child again and unsure whether to leave him thus. "You'll take good care of my little soldier, won't you? He takes gruel twice a day, and bread and butter, but you mustn't give a child meat. Of course, you know that. He won't sleep without this."

She handed over a scrap of silky material, perhaps a torn-off piece of a scarf.

"Goodbye, my precious," she cooed at the boy, who ignored her, far too fascinated by the cat, and then she was gone.

The girl watched her through the window until the fog swallowed her up entirely, then she turned to look at the child. He was bunching up a fat little fist in the cat's ginger fur.

"She doesn't like that," said the girl.

The cat shot out a paw and scratched the boy, who screamed and burst into tears.

"See." The girl sighed and rolled her eyes. "What a noise. Stop it."

The cat shot, an orange streak, into the neighbouring room.

The girl stood for a while, watching the strange crumpling of the child's face, before reluctantly going to him and lifting him into her arms.

"Now don't cry," she said. "I am to be your sister. Your sister, Meg. And you are my little brother, Johnny. Oh, please don't cry. Do you like lullabies? Shall I sing you one?"

She is singing to him, rocking him on her knee by the fire, when the old woman comes out of her bedroom, stooping low over her walking stick.

He is no longer crying and his eyes are half-closed, his tiny hand closed around the scrap of silk the nursemaid brought with her.

"He's got big," commented the old lady, falling rather than sitting into an armchair. "He'll eat us out of house and home, I suppose."

"Ma and Pa can afford to feed him," said the girl fiercely, breaking off her lullaby. "They feed half the starving orphans round Ludgate Circus already. What would prevent them feeding their own grandson?"

"Shame," said Aunt Hetty, and then there was no more to be said.

He recalls walking through dandelions higher than his head while the chickens pecked at the seed he threw for them, down by his warm bare feet. It seemed as if those early days brought perpetual sunshine, though of course this could not truly be the case.

He was always looking for a place of his own, a place away from the old woman's walking stick that descended so frequently and painfully on his back and shoulders. A place away from Meg's sly pinches and wounding words and even more wounding silence. He liked Meg, pretty Meg – why would she not like him back?

He and his ally, the marmalade cat, spent their spring and summer days out of doors, finding hiding places and dens among the overgrown land around the cottage. It wasn't far to the river, though he was strictly forbidden to go near it. All the same, he sometimes drew thrillingly close to its fast-flowing waters and imagined sailing away beyond the place where his line of sight ended and the river disappeared into woodland and sky.

His pale skin grew brown in the sun and his hair thickened and got only blacker, instead of lighter as his aunt and Meg seemed to wish it would.

"Look at him. You could give him to the gypsies and they'd have him for their own," said aunt Hetty disdainfully. "You've caught that frock on a bramble again. Meg, get the needle and thread."

Conversation was scant in the cottage over meals or afterwards in the parlour where the clock tick-tocked all day long. What could a young girl and a very old (and almost completely deaf) woman have to discuss, after all? Fractured tales of aunt Hetty's youth were sometimes told, to which Meg pretended to listen whilst eyeing her book surreptitiously.

Johnny would sit under the table, making a snake out of a length of wool, or sorting the spare buttons into sizes and colours. He stared up at the clock on the mantel, feeling its ticking and tocking creeping into his body and soul. He counted the minute divisions, then grouped them, then put them in twos and threes and counted them again. Jess, the marmalade cat, lay beside him, trusting him now, his only friend.

Their only other visitor, apart from some tradesmen who ruffled his hair and clicked their tongues and winked at him, was the vicar's wife.

She came to visit aunt Hetty twice a week. Johnny liked her name – Mrs Crisparkle. Crystal. Sparkle. Christmas.

"Dear Lord," she said, one autumnal day near his fourth birthday, after he had been called in from the garden, where he had subsisted all day on windfall apples and blackberries. "Has the boy still not spoken yet? He is nearly four, is he not?"

These words were, of necessity, spoken very loud, for aunt Hetty caught only one word in every three these days.

"He understands all you say to him," said Meg, coming into the room with a tray of tea. "Ask him to fetch anything and he will. And if he does not like what you say, he is pitched into the most fearful fit of temper. He can scream all right. But he will not form the words. I think it wilfulness in him, for he evidently possesses the capability."

"The child's a devil," mumbled aunt Hetty. "Meg took him t'Cloisterham and he wouldn't come away from the sweet shop window, no, kicked and screamed, he did, and she had to drag him the length of the High Street afore he'd leave off."

Johnny's memory floated blissfully back to the window of the Lumps of Delight shop, a bow-windowed heaven of bright colours and striped sticks of candy and sugar-dusted jellied fruits and ribbon-wrapped boxes of Turkish Delight. Oh, why had not Meg let him go in?

"Come and sit by me, Johnny," invited Mrs Crisparkle, leaning forward. He liked Mrs Crisparkle, who was like a grown-up doll in her frilled dimity gown and pristine bonnet. Besides, she smelled of lavender. He went to her and sat down, twisting his old scrap of silk between his fingers. "What's this I hear about you never speaking, dear? Why, that will never do. A fine young man needs to speak to make his way in the world. Where do you think you shall go and what shall you do, Johnny?"

He twisted his silk over and over and kicked his heels against the claw foot of the chaise. It wasn't that he didn't want to speak. He could not explain it. It just seemed _better_ not to.

"Johnny," reproached Meg. "Mrs Crisparkle is so kind to take notice of you. Is this how you repay her?"

"Oh, no matter," said Mrs Crisparkle. "I wish my Sept might be a few years younger. He could be a playmate for you. But he is gone away to school now. Should you like to go away to school?"

_I know not whereof you speak. What is school?_

But he did not pose the question aloud.

"He sings," said Meg, a little desperately. "He knows ever so many songs. So he has words. He simply elects not to use them."

"He sings?"

"Yes, he carries a tune well for a child of his age."

"Then, thank heavens, he has intellect. There was a mute boy in the village some years ago. Alas, nobody could make themselves understood to him and he was put away."

Johnny's skin prickled and he found himself unable to swallow suddenly. People who did not speak were 'put away'? Where? What could she mean?

"But that is not in question for you, dear Johnny. Will you sing me a song? I should so like to hear it, for I love music, you know."

"Sing _O God Our Help In Ages Past_," urged Meg. "You do it so beautifully. I mean, for a three year old. Please do not expect it to sound like the choir at Cloisterham, Mrs Crisparkle."

"Then shall you accompany him at the piano, Meg?"

"Oh." She hesitated. "I do not like to…I have not played it in some time."

"It would so oblige me to hear you."

Meg stood abruptly, as if the request had offended her in some way, and took the little key that unlocked the piano lid from the pot on the shelf beside it.

Johnny could not help following her. He had never seen the lid taken up before and was astonished to see the expanse of pale brown and black keys that lay underneath. He was yet more astonished when Meg drew up the stool, put her fingers on the keys and made sounds come out of them.

He was so wide-eyed and fascinated that Meg had to play the introduction, somewhat laboriously, twice over before he remembered to come in with the words.

He liked to sing and he liked the sound of the words in his mouth, though he hardly knew what they might mean. He especially liked the line 'Time like an ever-rolling stream/Bears all its sons away'. The grandeur and solemnity of it struck him always, making him feel a small but integral part of the world, rather than the useless adjunct to it he most often saw himself as.

"Wonderful, quite wonderful," applauded Mrs Crisparkle rapturously. "Did you teach him this, Meg?"

"Yes," she admitted. Idle Sunday afternoons when the weather was bad were always spent singing hymns and sewing.

"You must teach him his letters. I'm sure he will be quick to learn, if he can recall such verses so well. Perhaps if he can spell words, he will also be able to voice them. And, you know, it will be as well for you to have some experience of teaching." She dropped her voice low, giving the oblivious and half-asleep aunt Hetty a sidelong glance. "It may well be useful, _when the time comes._"

The grown of the world spoke in such riddles, Johnny thought. What time could she mean?

But his attention was only briefly captured by this thought, for he had an entire new world to discover and explore, a world composed of ivory and harmony, bounded by wooden ends of the cabinet piano, and he was impatient to savour its delights.


	2. Chapter 2

The descent into winter was slower and mellower than the preceding year, when a thin layer of ice had covered the river, to Johnny's fascination and Meg's disgust. All the same, his fourth birthday was spent indoors, sheltering from severe gales that seemed to want to whip the sea across the marshes up into a fulminating wave that would cover the land with its wrath.

He did not, as he might have done even in recent times, spend the day gazing wistfully through the window, his neck wrapped up in a comforter as proof against the draughts that made short and sneaky work of the rotting timber.

He had a far superior occupation now, and one that seemed to have even more magical properties than the production of sound. Ever since he had begged Meg to teach him the notes, she had softened towards him and was often quite kind.

Perhaps she had simply outgrown her petty spites and morose moods, for she was now sixteen and back to the bloom her aunt had lately lamented as lost. She seemed content to sit with him at the piano, showing him the fingering for _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_, teaching him what the black squiggles in her music books meant.

_Twinkle Twinkle_ turned into more complicated melodies, some of which he created by himself, others he constructed from his recollections of the hymns at church and the tunes the butcher's boy whistled. The piano was a wondrous fountain of joy to the infant Johnny, if a nuisance to his aged aunt, who tutted and grumbled when he played the same air fifteen times in succession, eager to perfect it before leaving off and trying something else. It was manna in his desert, sunshine in his darkness, a ray of hope in his unformed, uneasy soul.

And, as his musical education flourished, so did his learning of alphabet and number. Meg took to Mrs Crisparkle's suggestion with some enthusiam – whether from uncertainty about her future, the boredom of darkening winter days or genuine desire to inculcate learning to her little charge was not clear.

What was clear was that Johnny was quick to pick up the necessary skills and was soon able to fill his slate with curly-lettered messages. Since he was still yet to utter a word in speech, this was an enormous step forward in the field of domestic communication, though Aunt Hetty might have benefitted more if her eyes were not grown so weak.

Meg schooled him gently, without recourse to her aunt's dread stick, and he responded to her new manner wholeheartedly, clinging to each little word of affection as if it might slip from his grasp and turn the world black again. Sometimes she even sat him on her lap and let his curly head rest against her apron bib and the softness behind it. Once he looked up to see that she was crying over him, her tears dropping like very slow rain into his raven's wing hair.

He wanted to ask her why she cried, he almost made the words come, but at the last they stuck in his throat and he thought that perhaps it was best he did not know anyway. He did not need to add to his own sum of sadness, after all.

So he ran to the piano and played a tune that was merry, a march to remind her of the red-jacketed soldiers they sometimes saw when at market in Cloisterham, whose winks and waves made her blush fit to match their livery.

His dark humours still seized him at unpredictable times, earning him many hours locked in the cookhouse until the storm had blown through. He flung the pots and pans to the ground or beat them against the wooden walls, chipping and marking the rough planking. It was as well that they were indestructible, Meg said. But _he_ wasn't, he realised one day, and that was when he managed to knock himself out with the frying pan. After that, he wasn't locked in the cookhouse again.

Meg teased him about the blow to the head and said it had turned him into a devil-child, but he knew she only said it in jest, because he had been a devil-child before that.

By the spring, he was able to read the books on the living room shelves, though most of them were far too dull to contemplate. He liked parts of the Bible, especially the Proverbs, for which he made up little tunes, elaborating them on the piano.

"When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish; and the hope of unjust men perisheth," he chanted in his piping little voice, furnishing a variety of minor chords to underline the point.

"What a curiosity you are," muttered aunt Hetty. "An unnatural child."

But Meg laughed and asked him to sing another.

"Wine is a mocker," he sang, giggling along with her now. "Strong drink is raging."

"For shame," said aunt Hetty, banging her stick on the floor. "You are blasphemous. Stop it now, I tell you."

But she was less irritated by her nephew's disrespect of the holy book than she was by her suspicion that he was making a sly comment on her fondness for rum punch.

The month of June brought a big wedding at the village church, of the man at the grey-gabled house with the great high wall to a beautiful golden-haired lady. Meg took him to watch the bride and groom come out of the churchyard, but he was not much interested, preferring instead to watch a game of chase that was being played on the green close by.

"Go and join them, if you must," Meg sighed.

But Johnny shook his head. The village children teased him about his hair and his silence. They would not welcome him to their game.

He turned to watch the procession, the rice thrown in the air, the cheering and mounting of the carriage ready to take them away to their wonderful married future.

"She's so beautiful," breathed Meg, with nothing of envy, simply admiration for the glowing golden bride.

Johnny considered this proposition and was inclined to agree.

She looked in his direction as the carriage passed by and he was momentarily blinded by her glory, hiding behind his sister's skirts until the apparition was gone.

He wasn't sure what he thought about marriage. He couldn't really work out what it was for. He knew that he had parents, who were married, in London, but they never came to Cloisterham and he hardly supposed they ever would. They sent money, that was as much as he knew, and occasionally a letter for Meg, over which she would weep before crumpling it and throwing it in the fire. He dreaded those letters, for she was always harsh and cross with him for days afterwards.

More often than that, though, she was patient, teaching him with a quiet resignation that approached actual kindness at times. She left off trying to make him speak, for it only upset them both, but encouraged him to sing more and more.

Summer came again and Johnny alternated piano playing with chasing chickens and trying to scoop fish from the river, lying on his stomach on the towpath and dabbling his hands in the slack waters. Meg disapproved of his going near the river and would scold him if she caught him, but he loved nothing more than to watch the boats and barges sailing past, on their way to London.

Jess the cat followed him down one day, keen to profit from Johnny's hopeless efforts. He had a jar today and he swished it about in the weeds, hoping for tadpoles, even though their season was past.

A man walked by with a dog, which barked at Jess. Her ginger fur stood on end, her tail a huge brush and she fled along the towpath. Johnny leapt up and chased her, but she wouldn't stop and eventually slunk through a gap in the high wall that surrounded the grey gabled house and disappeared.

Johnny stood by the wall, looking behind and then in front, uncertain of what to do. What if Jess got lost in there? She didn't know the place. What if she never came back?

He put down his jar and squeezed his small body between the crumbled stone heights, finding himself in a small perimeter thicket. He hissed for Jess, but she did not come.

Peering through the branches, he could see a lake in the distance. Closer at hand, at the rear of the house, which he faced, was a vast trim lawn on which some very well-dressed people were playing croquet.

The house was dauntingly big and handsome. Johnny could not imagine living in such a place. The games of hide and seek he and Meg could play… The beautiful bride lady lived here, and he thought he saw her, far off, a white ruffled figure sitting in the shade of a little marquee with some other ladies, taking tea.

A sudden streak of ginger shot across the neat green, causing the croquet players to shout and laugh.

Johnny sprung from the bushes and ran after it, but Jess was away around the side of the house before he could get close to her, and he hadn't got very far when a large hand grabbed him by the shoulder and a larger voice asked him what the devil he thought he was doing.

He looked up into a wide, healthy face with a splendid moustache.

His attempts to struggle free of his captor's grip were useless, if spirited, and he aimed a kick at the man's shin which made him suck in a breath and tighten his hold to a painful intensity.

Meanwhile, another man had loped up, a thin fellow, very dandyishly attired – the groom from the wedding.

"I say, Drood, what have we here? A little gypsy child?"

"A little ruffian," growled the man addressed as Drood. "If you were half a head bigger I'd thrash the life out of you, boy. What are you doing here? Come to thieve, have you? Eh?" He shook Johnny until he wailed aloud.

"I say, old fellow, go easy. He can't be above five years old." The other man dropped to a crouch and looked into Johnny's face. "What's your name, boy?"

Johnny said nothing, but simply snivelled and twisted around in the moustache man's tight hold.

"You may go home just as soon as you explain what you are doing here," the dandy man continued pleasantly. "Come now – I can't have all and sundry roaming my lawns, can I? This is private property."

"Let me whip it out of him," suggested Drood.

At this suggestion, a silvery voice was raised in protest, and a rustle of petticoats heralded the arrival of the bride-lady.

"Heavens, he is only a little boy. Leave him be, Edwin. Let him come to me."

She stretched out her arms.

Johnny thought she might be an angel, come to take him to heaven. Drood reluctantly released him and the lady took Johnny's hands and drew him towards her.

"Who are you, little one?" she asked.

Her eyes were the blue of the china ornament on aunt Hetty's mantel. She had golden ringlets that fell forward as she leant down to him and brushed his cheek.

He looked towards the men, standing together with eyebrows raised, and looked back at her.

"I am John Jasper," he said.

His voice! That was how it sounded. He said it again, for good measure, a little louder.

"I am John Jasper."

She laughed. "That is a very good name. I have a very silly name – shall I tell you what it is?"

He nodded.

"It is Rosa Bud! Did you ever hear anything so foolish? Rosa Bud, indeed. I had a perfectly lovely name of my own once – I was Rosa Wakeham – but then I married this gentleman here and now I have the most ridiculous name in all England. Don't you pity me, you, with your solid, sensible name?"

He smiled, reflecting the sunshine of her own expression back at her.

"Now, tell me, Master Jasper," she said in a conspiratorial whisper, "did you come here for your cat?"

He nodded vigorously.

"I thought as much. It's my belief that cats are very clever creatures who unerringly know the way home. I think your pet will be waiting there for you when you return."

"Do you?" he said.

"I am quite sure of it. Now, if you will tell me where you live, I will dispatch these two gentlemen here to escort you safely home."

"I can go by myself."

"Oh, but you are just a baby. Mr Bud and Captain Drood will be happy to take you home, won't you, gentlemen?"

They looked far from it, but each mumbled some words of assent as the blue of Mrs Bud's eyes took on a steelier hue.

"Come then – where do you live?"

"In the village. With aunt Hetty."

"Lead the way, and your guardsmen will follow. Thank you for your visit, Master Jasper." She bent and kissed his grimy forehead. "I am ever so much obliged. I hope I will see you in church on Sunday."

He put his fingers up to the warm spot she had left on him and watched in wonder as the faery bride returned to her bower, skirts trailing and ringlets bouncing.

"Tender-hearted girl, ain't she, your Rosa?" said Drood, a mite sourly, to his companion.

"She has always loved children. I'd call that a good sign," replied Bud. "Well, then, young chap. Let's be off, shall we?"

Johnny delivered them to the cottage, from the door of which Meg flew out, ribbons streaming, apron flapping.

"Johnny, where have you been? I have been calling and searching for you this last hour. Oh. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I hope Johnny has not been misbehaving himself?"

She had grabbed Johnny's wrist and pulled him towards her, and now she straightened up, looking properly at the visitors.

"Young Johnny has been for a walk where he should not have been," explained Bud.

"Oh, dear, I am very sorry to hear it."

Bud carried on with the tale of Johnny's wanderings, but Johnny could not help but notice that Meg was not listening particularly hard. She and that damnable moustache man were engaged in a furtive game of pretending not to look at each other.

"I am so sorry," she repeated at length. "I would invite you in for tea, as recompense for the inconvenience you have been put to, but my dwelling is very humble…as you see…"

"Not at all," chimed in Drood, in his big, braying voice. "A dish of tea would be capital."

"I ought to get back to Rosa," demurred Bud. "And our guests."

"You go on back, Bud. Don't worry about me. I shan't be long."

Johnny was sent to the other room to reflect upon his impetuosity. Jess lay on his bed, curled up as if nothing had ever happened.

He heard the boom of Drood's voice, Meg's gentler tones, the chink of teacups, an occasional querulous grunt from aunt Hetty. Why did that man want to take tea here when he could be at the fairy castle with the beautiful Rosa Bud?

Johnny lay on his bed and thought about Rosa Bud. Was it possible for a lady to have two husbands? If so, would she consider him? He added it to his rather scant list of life ambitions, along with being able to play everything ever written for the piano and sailing the seven seas.

But he came to rue the day that he ever met Rosa Bud, for on that day Meg met Captain Drood, and thereafter the moustachioed soldier seemed to visit very much more often than Johnny found congenial.

He was instructed to make himself scarce during these visits, but sometimes he could not help stumbling into their awkward ritual of tea and flirtation, much as he loathed and avoided Drood's false joviality.

"Ah, brother Jack," Drood said on one such occasion, Johnny's fifth birthday as it transpired. "You know, Margaret, the boy is five years old and his health is clearly what one might call rude. Would your parents not take him back to London? The Cloisterham air has worked its wonders and he surely can't be regarded as needing it longer?"

Johnny's shoulders stiffened and he went under the table, not trusting Meg to defend him in his absence.

"My parents are very busy," said Meg vaguely. "They have no time to care for him. He is better here."

"Yes, but Margaret…" Drood lowered his voice. "Your aunt is very old and frail now."

"But I am not."

"How shall I put this, Margaret? There are reasons, personal to me and which will become apparent quite soon, I hope, that render it much more convenient if your brother is in the care of his own parents. For, while a man with his own establishment can be much in want of company, that company is not generally that of a small boy."

"Oh." Meg's hand flew to her mouth and her cheeks flooded with blood.

They looked at each other a long time, then Meg looked at Johnny under the table.

"I will write to them," she whispered.


	3. Chapter 3

It was such a glorious sound as little Johnny had never heard before, soaring up into the arches and flying, taking his heart and soul with it, it seemed.

How did a sound so celestial come from the mouths of those ordinary-looking people at the front? Boys older than him but still in frocks. As for the men, did they not object to being relieved of their trousers and waistcoats and put in those gowns?

It was unaccountable, but then, so was so much of what happened around him.

At least the music had stopped him from kicking at the pew in front, which had been his previous entertainment, until aunt Hetty had prodded him painfully with her walking stick. It even eased the horrible chafing of his new collar, the linen starched too stiff for comfort. The novelty of moving into 'big boy' clothes in honour of his sister's wedding had long lost its charm. The velvet jacket was too hot for the summer sun, though it protected him from the stony chill of the cathedral. The trousers were impractically white and he had already managed to get a muddy blotch on the left knee.

If the music went on forever, then perhaps the wedding would have to be cancelled. Surely even now, at the last, there was hope?

He had tried everything to prevent the dreaded day from ever taking place.

When the engagement had been announced, he had reacted quite mildly to the news, assuming that he and Meg would still stay together. Perhaps Captain Drood would give him a room in his house, a big, light one with a toy fort and soldiers in it.

But once Meg had haltingly explained that this would not be the case, he had erupted into a fury of furies, eclipsing by far any previous storm.

She had betrayed him and would now abandon him. Captain Drood had supplanted him and was henceforth his deadliest enemy.

Aunt Hetty locked him in the bedroom when Drood visited, where he relieved his feelings by pulling all the bedclothes off the beds and hammering at the door until the fiend was gone. All breakable objects were removed well in advance of the suitor's arrival.

Eventually, Captain Drood's patience wore out, and he demanded to be let into the room to deal with the malcontent.

"Oh, don't," Johnny heard his sister plead. "He is only five years old."

But Drood came roaring into the room, picked Johnny up by his armpits and hurled him hard at the wall so that he saw stars and almost lost consciousness.

After that, he was still locked in the room, but he spent the Captain's visits curled in a ball and sobbing, the cat giving him sympathetic bats of her paw.

He asked Meg again and again why she must leave him, until she began putting her hands over her ears, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

"Why do you want me to be unhappy?" she demanded, the very question he needed to have answered. "Do I not deserve to have what other girls have? Do you want me to live here alone until I shrivel up into an old hag?"

"But you wouldn't be alone. I would be with you."

"Don't you dare ruin my future happiness. Don't you dare. As if you hadn't done enough."

She ran out of the room before he could question her further on this puzzling assertion, but it lingered in his memory, causing a deep sense of undeserved injury.

He had done nothing to ruin her happiness! How could she say such a thing?

Any further protests were silenced by threats to lock the piano.

And so it was that Captain Drood and Meg knelt together on the altar stone of Cloisterham Cathedral, she all decked in tulle and flowers, he in his best livery, while the choir sang of glory and heaven.

The music stopped and Johnny's heart dropped like a stone.

A deal of talking followed, which he could barely hear. He twisted his neck around, looking for the people aunt Hetty had pointed out to him as his parents. He knew that both Meg and aunt Hetty hoped they would take him back to London with them, and he half-hoped for this too. London sounded like a very fine place for a boy to live, if only they were kind. But if they were kind, why had they never visited before? He couldn't decide what his feelings on the matter were, and thought that perhaps a good long look at them would settle the question.

The father had eyeglasses and wore all black. He was a vicar, Meg said. He looked a little intimidating and very old. The lady had on a very ugly bonnet and her face was very lined with thin, pressed-together lips.

Altogether, their demeanour was unpromising.

The mother caught him looking and gave him an indignant glare before turning sharply away.

Mothers were not supposed to be so, he thought with dismay. What sort of mother did not even smile at the son she had not seen since his birth? Was it the natural way of things that elders should always be cross and dismissive of children? He almost thought so, except that there were people like Mrs Crisparkle and Rosa Bud who were gentle and seemed to believe that this was the correct manner to use with children.

Rosa Bud was with her husband in one of the front pews, a vision in cornflower blue, the colour of her eyes. Johnny decided she made a better view than his hatchet-faced mother and fixed his gaze accordingly.

After the ceremony, Johnny was taken with aunt Hetty in a carriage to Captain Drood's house for the wedding breakfast.

It was a large, red-brick residence, about half the size of the Bud's gracious home, but still boasting plenty of space and half a dozen bedchambers.

Johnny explored these while the grown guests droned on dully downstairs, talking of the weather and the journey to Cloisterham and their own associations with the bride or groom – mostly the groom.

Johnny, apparently quite forgotten, tucked himself into a corner of the gallery landing and tried to look at a book about ships.

Beneath him, his parents came to stand, sipping at sherry.

"She thinks we will take the boy," said mother, and Johnny put down his book, heart racing. Was that all he was to his own parents? 'The boy'?

"Why on earth does she think such a thing?"

"I showed you the letter she sent. It seems her new husband isn't keen on having a resident brother-in-law, especially one so young."

"Well, she must prevail upon him. Either that, or he stays with Hetty. It is quite impossible that we should return to London with a five year old bastard in tow."

A what? What was a bastard? What did he mean?

"John! Do not use such words."

"It's what the boy is. Margaret has done very well to catch her army captain, but it does not alter the facts."

"Sh, John, I fear discussing these matters here. If we should be overheard…"

"Well, you are right, I suppose. Come, let us go and congratulate her, and give her the news that young Johnny will be staying in Cloisterham."

He peered through the railings and saw them cut a ponderous path through the knots of people in the reception hall.

Surely they were not really his parents?

He was contemplating the possibility of having been accidentally swapped at birth and having a kind, rich family in London who would come across him by chance and recognise him instantly as their own when he was interrupted by a rustle at the top of the stairs and a soft voice.

"Is it Master Jasper? Why, it is. What do you do here, all alone?"

She bent down, her eyes level with his at the other end of the gallery.

"Come downstairs, do. There is cake, and lemonade. You like cake, don't you?"

He nodded and crawled towards her, magnetised by her smile, with its pearly little teeth.

"That's it, that's a good boy, Jack."

He stopped.

"Who calls me Jack? I am Johnny."

"Oh, well." She laughed, a slightly uneasy little flutter. "Captain Drood does, and I suppose we do as a consequence, since he is a very great friend of ours."

"I do not like him."

"I know, dear, and I wanted to talk about it with you. But first, let us eat and drink."

She held out her hand and he took it, trotting down the stairs after her.

Meg, in conference with some other guests, turned around as he passed by, her lips tight.

"Leave him be, Rosa, if he wants to sulk."

"He is simply hungry. We are going to find some cake," said Rosa airily, leading him on to the drawing room, in which a mountain of cold food lay on every available surface.

Johnny loaded a plate with confections he couldn't begin to name, then Rosa took him out on to the patio and stood with him, looking over the garden, out of earshot of everyone else.

"You are very attached to your sister, are you not?" said Rosa.

Johnny, his mouth full of cream, could only nod.

"And you did not want her to leave you."

He shook his head.

"And that is why you have been so unfriendly to Captain Drood?"

Johnny shrugged. He was fascinated by the texture of the stuff in his mouth, which was both crispy and chewy at once, and the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

"What is this?" he asked, proffering the other half.

She laughed.

"It is meringue. Haven't you tasted it before?"

"No, never."

"But we were speaking of Captain Drood."

"I don't like to speak of him."

"Whatever you think of him, Jack, I'm sorry, Johnny, he is your brother-in-law now. A member of your family. And don't you think, if you showed yourself a little more acceptant, he might change his mind about having you come to live here?"

Johnny, through a mouthful of meringue, said, "Do you really think so?"

She leant towards him and whispered, "He was a boy himself once."

He swallowed the cake. "Was he?"

Rosa laughed.

"Well, of course he was, just as I was a girl. Shall I take you to him and we can congratulate him together?"

But Johnny shook his head and took his plate away to the corner of the patio, sitting there with it, behind a potted shrub, so that Rosa had to crouch in front of him to speak to him more.

"It seems hard now, dear, but if you make a little effort with him…"

"He hates me. And I hate him. Meg chose him instead of me."

"Oh, you make it sound so bleak." Rosa's laugh barely covered her dismay. "Meg and Captain Drood will want a little time to themselves, for now, but if you leave them be until the autumn, perhaps they might have changed their mind. Would you like me to speak to Meg for you?"

"Would you?"

He looked up, hopeful again for the first time in some while.

"Of course. I have seen your aunt and she is simply too old…" Rosa swallowed and looked away. "As for your parents," she said, but her words ran out, wavering.

"Rosa, my love – what are you doing out here? They are beginning the speeches. I wanted a last practice of mine with you, but you've been nowhere…Oh. I see. Come along in, then, Jack."

He looked up at Mr Bud with a unfriendly eye.

"My name is not Jack," he said as he passed back into the drawing room.

"Begging your pardon, sir," said Mr Bud with a salute, before weaving his way to the top table, with the bride, groom and both sets of parents.

The speeches were long and full of unaccountable laughter despite not being in the least funny and Johnny grew tired of them, slipping out to his upstairs gallery again until a search party was sent for him and he was put in a trap with aunt Hetty and sent home.

Meg didn't even say goodbye.

For the rest of that summer, she disappeared from view, while Johnny ran wild, staying away from aunt Hetty and the cottage from sunrise until sunset some days. He abandoned his books and even the piano keys grew dusty with disuse until the harvest was in and his sixth birthday approached.

Aunt Hetty lay in bed all morning while the rain lashed and the wind howled. There was nothing to do but take the china ornaments from the shelves and play at shipwrecks with them, the shepherds and shepherdesses now sailors at sea on the hearthrug in a sewing box that doubled as a ship.

A huge sea monster, in the form of a ginger cat, imperilled the voyage by batting its giant tentacle at the vessel. Johnny made the sewing box capsize, its china contents spilling all over the rag rug – but not too violently, lest any of them should break. The last time that had happened he had borne the bruises for weeks.

From outside, he heard the sound of horse's hoofs and cart wheels. Curious to see who might be passing in this weather, he went to the window, then called excitedly for Aunt Hetty on his way to pull open the door.

"It's Meg, Aunt. Meg is here."

The wind blew her this way and that as she fought her way up the path. The expression on her face was grim until she reached the door – then she smiled.

"No kiss for your married sister?" she asked.

Johnny threw his arms around her until she had to pick him up and carry him into the room, still clinging for dear life.

"Do let go of me, Johnny, there's a dear. If I don't shut that door the rain will blow in."

From the next room, the creaking of Aunt Hetty's bed could be heard.

"Why did you not come before?" Johnny demanded, breathless, clearing up the ornaments before his aunt noticed that they were out of their stations.

"I wanted to. But first of all, Captain Drood took me away on a honeymoon and ever since we've been back, it's been…Oh, I don't know. Just busy. Very busy. You have never had to set up a home before, so you would not understand."

"Captain Drood already had a home."

"No, he had a _house_, Johnny. It is not the same thing. Well, as I suppose you are not going to make the tea, I must do it myself."

She swished over to the back kitchen area and Johnny noticed how fine were her clothes now, with no darns or old aprons over them. Her hair contained so many pins and curls and ribbons that she looked like a fine lady. Like Rosa Bud.

"Am I to visit?" asked Johnny, watching Meg as she put the kettle on the trivet over the fire.

"Well, Johnny, this is the thing. Captain Drood is not fond of children, I'm afraid, but I have spoken up for you and taken your part and he has agreed to invite you and aunt Hetty to The Lindens for Christmas and New Year. Should you like that?"

"Very much!" exclaimed Johnny, his eyes alight.

She lowered her voice, as if worried that Aunt Hetty, still dressing herself in the room beyond, might hear.

"And if you are a very good boy and behave yourself very well, perhaps he might agree that you can come and live with us."

"Truly?"

"Hush, don't cry out. It may come to naught. But I hope it may happen. I have…" She turned back to the teapot and spoke matter-of-factly. "I have missed you."

"It has been so dull here without you," said Johnny passionately. "I hate living here and I hate Aunt Hetty."

"You mustn't!"

"All right, then, I don't hate her, not much, but I hate mama and papa. I hate them and I hope they die miserably of something horrible."

Meg stared.

"Such words from a babe. Johnny, you must not speak so."

"Why not? It is true."

Aunt Hetty appeared in the doorway, her stick wobbling before her.

"Oh, my girl," she quavered. "My girl is here. Where have you been?"

They sat by the fire and drank tea and talked of Meg's trip to Scotland and the Christmas to come. When she asked Johnny to play, his fingers stumbled and he was forced to confess that he no longer practised much.

"Oh, but you must," she cried. "For you are to provide our Christmas music. I have told everyone how beautifully you play and sing."

From that day, Johnny resumed his musical study as if he planned to rival the young Mozart. If he impressed at the Droods' Christmas festivities, then surely the Captain could not object to giving him a room of his house. He practised carols and Christmas tunes all the afternoon long, every day, until Aunt Hetty declared herself heartily sick of the three ships that came sailing in and wished they might sail off back to whence they came.

Mrs Crisparkle, during one of her twice weekly visits, persuaded him to take up his books again and suggested enrolling him at the National School in Cloisterham for the new year.

"I shall not be here," he said. "I shall be living with my sister on the far side of the town."

"Is this so?" Mrs Crisparkle asked Aunt Hetty, who shook her head.

"So he's told himself."

"Meg told me!"

"And her husband agrees?" Mrs Crisparkle spoke gently.

"He _will_ agree," said Johnny, so fiercely that the subject was swiftly changed.

Thus it was that, by the time Christmas Eve of 1825 came around, Johnny Jasper had a head full of music and a heart full of hope.

He sat in the chaise his sister sent round, beside his aged aunt, she wrapped in shawls, he in the uncomfortable and now too-small velvet jacket, bowling through the countryside until they reached the other side of Cloisterham.

It was only the second time he had made this journey and he watched attentively as the scenery jogged past, craning his neck out to look at the distant spire of Cloisterham Cathedral and the crenellated tower of the neighbouring castle. What wonderful sights these were to his young eyes, which had seen little beyond the village on whose outskirts his cottage lay.

When he lived with the Droods, they would come often to the town. He could spend as much money as he liked in Lumps of Delight. He could visit the castle and walk on its ramparts, and he could go down to the sea and dip his toes in the salty water. Perhaps he could have a pony. And a puppy. Several puppies.

By the time they passed through the gates of The Lindens, Johnny had a monkey, a church organ and a painted canal barge.

A drizzly rain fell on him as he ran to the front door, wreathed in holly and red ribbons. The coachman helped Aunt Hetty down himself, and she was still struggling over the gravel when the door opened and Meg came out to greet them.

"I know ever so many carols," said Johnny breathlessly. "I know them all. Shall I play for you, now?"

"Wait, wait," she laughed. "There will be time enough to hear all of them. I am happy that you are here, Johnny."

She embraced him, then let go to help Aunt Hetty up the steps.

Captain Drood stood in the hallway, looking at him expressionlessly.

"Jack," he said, holding out a stiff arm. "Let us shake hands."

Johnny almost castigated him for using the name he loathed, but remembered in time that he had to be agreeable. He took the proffered hand and shook it as invited.

Everything was going to be different now. Everybody was going to be friends.


	4. Chapter 4

Almost as soon as he crossed the Drood threshold, Meg ordered Johnny a bath, which he was by no means thrilled about, but this was such a bath as he had never before experienced. The vessel was luxuriously curved and made of a smooth white material, not the rough tin of aunt Hetty's tub. The maidservant put something fragrant in the water and, when he was clean and dressed again, she combed through his hair.

Aunt Hetty would yank and hurt, but this girl had a gentle touch and he gave up his initial resistance swiftly and let her work on him.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"I'm Martha."

"You can be my maid, when I live here."

She laughed.

"Oh, can I now? Well, I shall look forward to it. Lord, what a lot of hair you do have."

"Are other people coming here, for Christmas?"

He rather feared the presence of his parents, whom he had no desire to see again.

"Now, let me see. We have you and your aunt, and Captain Drood's mother, and his younger brother, and Captain Drood's friend from Egypt – I think that is all. Oh, and on Boxing Day there will be a small gathering of friends. If I remember rightly they have invited a dozen or so."

"Have they invited Rosa Bud?"

"Why, yes, I think they have. Do you know the lady?"

"She is the first person ever I spoke to."

"Truly? She is a special friend to you then."

Johnny smiled, enjoying this idea.

"Yes, she is my best friend."

Downstairs, he was allowed to play and sing for the company while they enjoyed tea and festive treats in the drawing room. Captain Drood's mother seemed quite taken with his performance and praised him to the skies, which offset some of the anxiety engendered by the odd demeanour of his sister and her husband.

Captain Drood, it seemed, had little to say to Meg, and she was pale and drawn, frequently leaving the room with precipitate haste.

She was too indisposed to join the party for supper, and Johnny sat at the far end of the table with aunt Hetty, half-listening while Captain Drood's friend regaled all with tales of Egypt and its mysteries and riches. The mantel was cheerfully decorated with garlands of holly and mistletoe, but there was a sober atmosphere that even old Mrs Drood's over-indulgence in sherry and subsequent cawing of carols could not quite jolly along.

After supper, he concealed himself behind a long velvet curtain, hoping that nobody would recall his presence and send him to bed, wanting to stay up and listen for the first peal of Christmas bells.

He fell asleep there and was discovered by Martha and another girl when they came in to clear up the glasses and plates.

Martha woke him, but he was too drowsy to stir, so she carried him up the stairs, puffing to her companion as they went.

"He's too big for this caper," she gasped. "Why didn't somebody put him to bed earlier?"

"S'pose they forgot. Did you hear about Liza Drewe? Another babby, they say. Another bastard."

Johnny's ears pricked up. That word again – the one his father had spoken. What did it mean?

"No, never! Not after the last time. Who's is it?"

"Someone who came to pick hops, they reckon, long gone now."

"There weren't no hop picking nine months ago! Hops ain't ready till the summer."

"Well, I dunno, anyway. Somebody. Do you think…?" She lowered her voice, presumably for Johnny's benefit, though he still heard every word.

"What?" whispered Martha.

"The mistress."

Martha inhaled, a little fearfully. "I don't know. It seems like it, don't it? She's been so sick these last few weeks."

They stopped and the other girl opened the bedroom door.

Martha laid him down on his bed, took off his jacket and boots and loosened his collar.

"Can you do the rest, little man?" she asked kindly.

He nodded, yawning.

"Best get to sleep now, or there'll be no visit from Father Christmas for you. Oh, aren't you going to hang your stocking on the fireplace?"

"My stocking?"

"Have you never done this?"

"No, never."

"Then I'll do it for you."

Johnny watched with sleepy bemusement as Martha took one of his clean stockings from the drawer.

"When you come downstairs in the morning," she said, "you might find a surprise or two waiting for you."

"What kind of surprise?"

"That ain't for the likes of us to know, young sir." Martha smiled mysteriously and put a finger to her nose. "Good night, now."

Despite cold that bit into his toes and numbed the end of his nose, the Christmas service at Cloisterham cathedral was a thing of glory to Johnny. Already the day had given him an orange, a bag of mixed nuts, peppermints and a tin whistle, all wrapped in tissue and hidden in his stocking. Now it gave him even more – music that rose up and fought the cold and made it forgettable, insignificant even.

The low notes from the organ seemed to creep under the stone floor and make the pews vibrate.

"I should like to see the organ," he petitioned Meg as they walked back to the West Door after the service.

She waved vaguely at the pipes but he shook his head.

"No, the instrument, the keys," he said.

"Oh, it is up in the loft. Only the organist is permitted."

Dull and lightweight seemed the piano as he tinkled the opening bars of Stille Nacht before dinner was served. He wanted to make the silver rattle and the glasses chime, but the most he could do was kick at the piano stool, frustrated that his legs wouldn't reach the pedals.

"Come, Jack, it is time to sit at the table."

Why did Meg call him Jack now? He feigned deafness and played on, but at length Captain Drood lifted him bodily from the stool and deposited him in his seat beside Aunt Hetty, who scolded him for his heedlessness.

He scowled, his Christmas now darkened after its promising start, and applied himself mutely to the goose and its accompaniments while adult conversation flew above his head.

Meg had barely eaten a morsel before she had to leave the table, distinctly green about the gills. Johnny looked after her and tried to follow her, but the older Mrs Drood told him in no uncertain terms to leave her be.

When she returned, she exchanged a strange look with Captain Drood, who put down his knife and fork in a rather final manner, leading the rest of the table to halt in their repast also and regard him with an air of expectancy.

"It's been dashed difficult keeping quiet about this," he said, "and I daresay most of you know exactly what it is I have to announce, but I hope you'll wish me and Margaret well when I tell you that we are to be parents."

A great cacophony of exclamation and squawking and backslapping rent the air around Johnny, who could only stare at his sister and wonder how she knew this wondrous event was to come to pass. And when? Really, aside from a certain pastiness of complexion, she looked every inch her normal self.

"In the summer," she said, in response to a question from someone. "Yes, the doctor supposes around the end of June or start of July."

More jumbled conversation ensued which Johnny could not follow. He tried to catch Meg's eye but she would not look at him – almost, it seemed, on purpose.

When at length the buzz died down, old Mrs Drood turned to him, the only member of the party who seemed sensible of his existence, and said, "What do you think to that, master Jack? You are to be an uncle."

"Am I?"

"Yes, of course, for when your sister's baby is born, you shall have a tiny nephew or niece."

"Meg will have a baby?"

"He is but a child, he does not understand such things," cautioned Meg. "Yes, Jack. I will have a baby."

Johnny nodded, hoping to impress a sense of the depth of his understanding on the company.

"And shall the baby be a bastard?" he asked.

He was not prepared for the consternation this simple question occasioned. Old Mrs Drood shrieked for him to be removed from the table, and this came swiftly to pass, as Captain Drood took him by his collar and marched him upstairs, shoving him grimly and wordlessly into his bedroom, the door of which was locked behind him with a terrible grinding noise.

And with that, Johnny's Christmas Day was over, until very much later, when Martha stole into the room with a slice of Christmas cake on a plate.

"Oh, poor love, have you been crying since dinner?" she whispered.

"I have not been crying," he insisted fiercely, though he knew his eyes probably told a different tale.

"I have spoken to the mistress," she said, "and explained that you must have heard that…word you spoke…from Lizzie, when we thought you asleep last night. I have said that you don't know what it means and your question was innocently meant. I am right to think so, aren't I?"

He nodded.

"What does it mean?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I should not say. But it is not a word you must ever use in company, Master Jack. Please mind me."

"I am not called Jack."

"Well, I'm sorry I spoke, I'm sure. Enjoy your cake. And your sister'll come round. She isn't angry with you, more sorry that this silly mistake came about. Go to sleep now. Tomorrow will dawn a new day."

Yes, tomorrow might dawn a new day, but it would bring nothing of luck for John Jasper, thought Johnny despairingly. Meg would have her own child and he would be forgotten.

But Rosa Bud would come to visit for Boxing Day, and he could sing and play for her.

If he went to sleep thinking of her, would he then dream of her?

He struggled out of his tight best suit, resolving to test the theory.

It didn't work, but at least the morning brought him a visitor, in the form of Meg.

"Johnny," she whispered, hurrying over and kneeling by his bedside. "I know you were not to blame for what you said yesterday. Servants' talk…forgive me for the miserable Christmas Day you have passed."

He sat up in bed.

"How do you know you will have a baby?" he asked her, a question which had been puzzling him ever since the disastrous dinner.

She took his hand and squeezed it.

"God sends us signs, Johnny."

"What sort of signs?"

"Peculiar sensations – fatigue and sickness, and such." She seemed flustered, looking away as she spoke.

"I was sick when I ate too much plum cake," said Johnny. "I didn't have a baby."

"Of course you didn't. That isn't how it happens."

"How does it then?"

"That is not fit for you to know, at your age. Johnny, I have come here to be forgiving and all you can do is pester me with silly questions."

She sounded cross and he sighed and put his arms around his knees, resting his head upon them.

"Perhaps the baby will not come," he said leadenly.

"Johnny! Do not say such a thing."

"You will care more for the baby than for me."

"No." She held her breath for a minute and he looked up, struck by her consternation. "No, I won't," she said. "I never will. But you must understand…"

"Do not tell me I cannot live here," he said, putting his hands over his ears. "Do not say it. I will not listen."

She took his hands from his ears and held them to her breast.

"I have fought so hard to bring you here, Johnny. I have been your constant advocate – please believe me when I say this. But now that the new baby is expected, Captain Drood, who was so close to softening, has set his face against it."

"I hate him," stormed Johnny, struggling to remove his hands from Meg's grip without success.

"You must not hate him, please, for me, Johnny. Please try to understand. He is your, your brother-in-law."

"He is not. He is my enemy. I hate him now and I shall hate him for life."

"Oh, how have you become this…this bitter, angry child?"

Meg stood and turned away, her voice cracked at the edges.

"I have become nothing. I have always been the same. It is you who has changed."

She left the room then, muttering something he only half heard about breakfast.

He dressed himself, rather erratically, and went outside, without his coat, heedless of the frosty lawn and the tinge of ice on the air. The cold pleased him; it replaced his anger with sharp knife cuts of pain all over his skin, then in his ears and bones, until the tip of his nose was numb and he had to stamp his feet to remind himself that he was still in possession of ten toes.

He was kicking a wall, rather enjoying the oddness of not feeling anything no matter how hard he tried, when he saw a fellow on a horse trot around the perimeter hedge of the grounds, slowing when it reached the front of the house.

He went back in through the back door and concealed himself by the staircase, interested to know the visitor's business.

Meg had taken him into a side room and shut the door, though, so he could not hear. When the messenger came into the hall, bidden to wait while his sister composed a note in reply, he heard Meg call for Captain Drood and bustle into the morning room opposite. Their conversation reached his tingling ears, apart from the bits that were spoken very low, which was rather a lot of it.

"Again?" said Captain Drood, after some whisperings from Meg. "It is a shame."

"She would be such a wonderful mother."

Low voices again, then from Captain Drood, "Well, it can't be helped. We shall miss their company but if Rosa is unwell, what is to be done?"

"Perhaps she will be well enough to join us for a New Year celebration."

"Let us hope so, Margaret. Where is that deuced brother of yours? He lurks about the place like a shadow. Tell him to show himself."

Johnny flitted upstairs and found the package of peppermints he had been given in his stocking. He had only eaten three, and there was half a pound in the bag, at least.

He ran back downstairs and pressed the sweets into the messenger's surprised hand.

"Give these to Mrs Bud," he entreated. "They are very good for settling the stomach."

The messenger roared with laughter, bringing Meg back into the hall, pen and paper in hand.

"What is it? Johnny?"

The messenger held up the peppermints.

"A Christmas box for the mistress," he explained. "Unexpected, I must say."

"I only meant to help," said Johnny, crestfallen at being ridiculed by the red-nosed fellow.

"This is very sweet of you, Johnny. Rosa will be cheered to know that you think of her in her time of indisposition. Go into the morning room – Captain Drood is asking for you."

He was reluctant to give Captain Drood audience, but he dawdled into the morning room and sat down by the fire, his feet not even reaching the footstool.

"Ah, Jack," said Drood. He essayed a smile to which Johnny responded with stony severity. "Humph. Well. We're all very sorry, as I think Margaret has mentioned, that you got the rough end of the stick yesterday. The servants spoke out of turn when they shouldn't have. You weren't to know what they meant. Shall we agree like gentlemen to let bygones be bygones?"

"What did they mean? Nobody will tell me."

Drood was taken aback by the question and spluttered a little.

"With good reason, Jack, with very good reason."

"I only ask because my parents said that I was one. They thought I didn't hear, but I did."

"Eh? What? Your parents?" Drood's frown was so furrowed and deep that Johnny thought his cheekbones might rise up to meet his brow, hiding his eyes away entirely. "What nonsense is this? I think you must have heard wrong, boy. Say no more about it, there's a lad."

But he was discomposed and his drumming fingers betrayed his agitation for the remainder of the interview.

"Captain Drood," Johnny opened tentatively, "I should like to live here."

"Impossible," he said snappishly.

"I could be a playmate for the baby," he ventured.

"Play? When do you ever play? I have never seen you do such a thing. You spend your time at that dashed piano or mooning over a book. My son will have more about him than that. I'll have him riding to hounds before he's out of frocks. A healthy, hearty, sportsman of a fellow with an open, honest, happy manner. That's what we Droods breed, Jack. Your influence will not be needed."

There appeared to be nothing more to say on the matter. After lunch, Johnny and aunt Hetty climbed once more into the Drood's carriage for the freezing journey back to their wretched cottage.

As Johnny looked out towards the cathedral spire, he wondered what it would be like to lie beneath such cold, cold ground.


	5. Chapter 5

It was raw as only a morning in February can be, with ice inside the panes and the hearth long grown cold from last night's blaze.

Aunt Hetty slept on, as she often did, but Johnny was hungry and so was Jess, jumping on his pillow and miaowing about his head.

There was catsmeat in the larder, Johnny discovered, his bare feet pattering over the stone cold flags. He had drawn a blanket about his shoulders, but it did little towards the abatement of his shivers.

For himself, he could find only hard bread. The butter was as rock and everything else wanted cooking, which he would not know how. Not even a rind of cheese or a slice of cold pudding to be had.

It was Saturday, though, and on Saturday the butcher's boy came with meat for the Sabbath day roast. The rest of the week they existed on less exalted fare.

He reached for the matches from their china pot on the mantel and knelt before the fire, thinking that the grate needed sweeping, but he was in too much of a hurry to get warm to bother much with that. There wasn't enough coal in the scuttle, though, and he would have to go outside to get more from the locked coal hole. Aunt Hetty kept the key on a hook he couldn't reach. He would have to wake her.

He took his life in his hands when he did this, for there was no way of knowing what her mood would be when the first stirrings of consciousness dragged her from her dreams. Sometimes she just spluttered and yawned for a while and gathered herself together, mild as one would expect an old lady to be. Other times she was fierce and struck out, her old arms as stringy and leathery as a vulture's. She still knew how to hurt, though, make no mistake about it.

Johnny had decided to himself that it depended whether her dreams were sweet or not how she received his alarm call. All he could do about it was try to rouse her with as little rudeness or shock as possible.

To this end, he picked up Jess and put her on the old lady's bosom, hoping that the gentle weight and warmth might bring her slowly into the real, and very cold, world.

Jess curled up on aunt Hetty's chest and purred, but it seemed to have no effect. After a minute or two, Johnny put a timid hand on her shoulder and shook it.

It was so cold.

Colder than the day. Was her breath warm, at least?

He put his hand to her open mouth, but nothing seemed to issue from it. Her breathing was excessively light. Or…

He put his fingers to her cheek. It was ice – thin, papery ice.

"She is dead," he whispered. "Oh, Jess, she is dead. What will become of us?"

He dressed and set off into the bitter morning, walking with his collar pulled up high to protect his face until he arrived at the rectory.

"Please, could you tell Mrs Crisparkle that John Jasper begs the favour of a word with her," he told the maid, who was disinclined to admit him, thinking him some urchin beggar or thief, perhaps, but he heard cutlery being dropped on to china and a chair being pushed back in a parlour beyond.

"Who is it, Lena?" boomed the voice of the Reverend Crisparkle.

"Just a mite of a boy, sir, says he wants to speak to the mistress."

"Well, ask him his name, then."

"He says it's Jasper."

Mrs Crisparkle appeared then in the passageway behind, all a-flutter with perturbation.

"What brings you here on such a cold morning, dear? Yes, let him in, Lena, it's quite all right."

"I think Reverend Crisparkle may need to arrange a funeral," he said, stepping into the beautiful warmth, delighting in it so that his shock and upset at discovering his aunt's dead body was almost forgotten.

"Oh, dear boy!" exclaimed Mrs Crisparkle, darting forward and clasping him to her rustling, lavender-scented skirts. "Dear, poor boy. Your aunt?"

"I cannot wake her," he mumbled into her bodice. "She will not wake."

Then a few tears fell, perhaps frozen by the cold till now, and he was bustled about, into the breakfast room where he was given eggs and toast and warm milk and all manner of exquisite delicacies while the Crisparkles cross-questioned him on what had happened.

They wrapped him in blankets and let him lie on their sofa after he had eaten, while the Reverend set off in his pony and trap to see for himself what had transpired. He must have slept, for he awoke in a bed, a lovely clean bed in a room that seemed to belong to a boy, for there was a row of skittles painted to look like soldiers on a shelf and some fishing tackle and a pair of boxing gloves in a chest visible from his bedside.

The soldier skittles swam a little in and out of his vision. He made an attempt sit up but he was weak and he shivered. And how his head ached!

He tried to call for Mrs Crisparkle but his voice wavered and it came out as a gasp.

She must have heard him, all the same, for she soon came running. How cool the swish of her skirts made him feel, for he was hot. Ridiculously hot, given how frozen cold he had been so shortly before. Her lavender scent, so lulling, so calming. And now he was cold again, even though Mrs Crisparkle had taken his hand in her powdery knobbly fingers and held it to her dry cheek.

"Lord," she said, feeling his forehead. "You're feverish. Oh good heavens. I will look to my medicine chest and send Lena for the physician. Dear Lord, you are trying us very hard today."

The soldiers loomed, their painted faces fierce and frightening, their red livery pulsing with heat. He saw the doctor but did not comprehend his words. The pain in his head grew bright, like a burning lamp, and whited out his vision. There was sleep, or waking with foul medicines that he could barely stomach, and often there was pain, even in his dreams. He saw Rosa Bud's face and he heard his parents talking of bastards and Captain Drood threw him against the wall while the Cloisterham Cathedral choir sang I Saw Three Ships…

Then, one morning, he woke and he heard birdsong. He felt as if it was years since he had last heard it. It was pure and piercing and clean and there was no more pain or sweat or that strange jumble of thoughts in his head. The skittles were mere skittles, no more menacing than the glass of water on the side table.

He sat up and took a draught, looking at the window. A pattern of frost rime lay on its panes, so it was still winter. The birds were hardy, to brave this cold. On the table stood a vase of daffodils, though, so spring was in prospect. Had there been daffodils in flower when he first came here? Where was here? Why had he come here?

The memories squeezed through gaps in his consciousness, slowly, darkening his thoughts.

Aunt Hetty was dead. What was to become of him?

He tried to climb out of the bed, his legs a little unsteady as his feet hit the floor. He held on to the footboard, making his way to the door by degrees.

When he opened it, the maid was retrieving clean linen from a cupboard. She squealed in shock, then called down for Mrs Crisparkle.

"He's out of bed, ma'am."

"Oh, thank the Lord!" enthused Mrs Crisparkle, taking her usual tiny steps up the stairs. "You are spared and we must pray together. Come, get back into bed or you will freeze. You are still very weak, you know."

"What happened to me, to make me weak?"

"You caught a terrible fever, an influenza, or so the doctor thinks. It may well be that which killed your poor aunt. You do remember that she is with God now, don't you?"

He nodded, pulling the covers back up to his chin. She was right. It was too cold to be up and about in only a nightshirt.

Mrs Crisparkle sat on the side of the bed and reached for his hand, which he willingly gave.

"She is to be buried today," she said gravely. "In our little churchyard. You are not well enough to be there, but as soon as you are stronger, I will take you to visit her grave. We shall have so many gay spring flowers in the garden soon – we can take some to her. Did she like flowers?"

"Not much. Why would you give flowers to a dead person?"

She chuckled ruefully.

"Well, I daresay it does seem a little strange, but it's custom, and I think it rather a pretty one. She might be looking down from heaven, to see that you are cared for and happy, and she will see the lovely flowers and know that she is remembered."

"Who is feeding Jess?"

"Jess?"

"My cat."

"I'm afraid I don't know. Some neighbours took the goats and chickens. Perhaps they also have the cat."

"But she's my cat! Can't you have her brought here? I can't sleep without her on my feet at night."

"Everything will be seen to, Johnny, don't fret. There is a great deal to be done when our Lord takes one of his children to his bosom."

"Is there?"

"Oh yes. But none of that is for you to worry about. We must think of getting you something to eat. And perhaps a book to look at?"

"What have you done with aunt Hetty? I mean, where is her body?"

"Johnny, she is at peace―"

"Did she lie long in the cottage? All alone."

His lip trembled. He wasn't sure he loved the old woman, but she was the only constant in his life, beside Jess, and now she was gone. Everything he knew must be thrown in the air and rearranged, with pieces missing.

"Don't upset yourself," said Mrs Crisparkle, folding him against her frills-and-dimity breast. "Hush, poor boy. Don't cry now."

He felt guilty, then, for letting his nose run on her bodice, but she didn't seem put out by it all, brushing herself off and saying, "Well, I must change into my black gown, after all. Reverend Crisparkle will expect me at the church. Try to rest, won't you?"

He stayed with the Crisparkles another week, and his convalescence was much enlivened, two days after the funeral, by a visit from Meg who brought with her a large wooden Noah's Ark filled with every imaginable animal.

"Dear Johnny," she said, sitting on his bedside while he sorted through the animals in a state of wonder. "I wish you had not had to discover poor aunt Hetty in that way. You were very brave."

He observed that her dress puffed out before her and wondered what arrangement of petticoats she must be wearing to create such a curious effect. Or was she growing suddenly fat?

She clasped her hands over the swelling and he noted her blush.

"The baby is growing," she said, but he could see no connection between this and her increase in bulk so he merely nodded and dropped the pair of zebras into the ark.

"Did you go to the funeral?" he asked. "Were our parents there?"

"Yes, they were."

"Am I to go to London with them?"

She put her hand on his before he could reach for the monkeys.

"No," she said, almost too softly to catch.

"Then what…?" His nerve failed him before he could finish the question.

"Johnny, when you are well, I am going to send my carriage for you."

His breath caught painfully and he wheezed, then broke into a coughing fit.

"Truly?" he said, once Meg had ministered to him with the water jug.

"Truly. But, I must tell you, dear, that Captain Drood is away with his regiment and I have not told him. You can stay with me until he returns, but after that…" She wrung her hands. "I really cannot say."

"When will he be back?"

"Before the baby is born – about four months from now."

But Johnny wasn't inclined to think about such a distant future. The ecstatic prospect of four unbroken months of spring with Meg in the big Drood house stretched before him, a vision of paradise.

And paradise it was, or close to it.

Every happy memory in his life was linked to Meg, from her teaching him his letters at her knee to their piano duets. Now all of that was his again, but the lessons took place in a large and airy room with globes and proper chalks – coloured ones too! - instead of stones, and a great many books to read. The drawing room piano on which he'd played the Christmas carols was scrupulously tuned and had a most marvellous tone. He had a room of his own and Meg had bought toys from the Cloisterham shop to put in it – not the giant fort and soldiers he had dreamed of, but all sorts of other things.

And the garden was big and the spring bulbs were starting to peep out of the cold ground and there was blossom on the trees. He liked to take a book or toy out and sit underneath the flowering cherry and feel the petals falling into his hair.

He missed Jess from time to time, so Meg got a kitten from a litter in the village, a tiny scrap of black and white, and it became his instant soulmate, another abandoned orphan creature who needed a friend.

It was early May and the blossom was off the trees before he made the connection between Meg's growing belly and the baby she would bear.

"Oh!" she exclaimed at tea-time, putting down her triangle of bread and butter. "How he kicks me."

"May I?" Rosa Bud, who was visiting that afternoon, put her slender hand on Meg's stomach. She squealed as Meg's skirts seemed to twitch. "Oh, he is very strong. You will have a fine little fellow, I think."

She took her hand off and looked away, just for a second.

Meg stroked her sleeve gently.

"And so will you, one day. I wish I could promise you."

"It is for God to decide, in His wisdom," she said.

Then both of them looked at Johnny, who could not leave off staring at his sister's stomach.

"The baby is inside you?"

They exchanged loaded glances and leant towards him, laughing and clucking and patting him as if he were a puppy who had performed a trick.

He shrugged himself crossly away.

"Oh, dear Johnny," sighed Rosa. "Did you not know? All babies grow inside their mothers."

"Nobody told me." He found the idea extraordinary and impossible to credit. Had he, himself, once lain inside that shrewish old woman's stomach? He imagined it would be arid and bitter in there. Perhaps that was why he possessed the temper he did.

They laughed again and he crushed his macaroon in his fingers and ran off to chase Jinx, his kitten, whom he had spotted lurking by the goldfish pond, where she was not allowed to venture.

She bounded off into the flowerbeds and he sat down by the pond, trailing his fingers in the water. Wafts of the tea table conversation were carried over on the breeze, though he couldn't catch it all and he didn't much care to.

That was until Rosa Bud exclaimed, "You mean you still haven't told him?"

He looked over to them, to see them looking over at him.

He turned his face away quickly, affecting not to have heard. But they had dropped their voices and he could make nothing out.

He forgot the moment of tension until Rosa came to leave. After kissing the top of his head, she turned to Meg and said, in an undertone, "Please consider writing that letter, Meg. If he returns home without warning…"

"I will, I will. Have a safe journey home, now, and give my love to old Buddy."

"What letter?" asked Johnny, watching Rosa's skirts swish down the steps.

"Little pitchers," she said sharply, and she turned on her heel, leaving him to feast on every last second of Rosa's presence in his existence, until only a cloud of dust on the lane remained.


	6. Chapter 6

Time was running out, this much Johnny knew. This age of joy, so short-lived, was slipping like sand through his fingers. Meg couldn't get about so easily any more and she would spend long periods of time just sitting and making faces. When she walked, she put a hand on her back.

Johnny had not realised that babies made one infirm and he feared for her health.

"You are not to die," he said to her, one hot June afternoon as she lay perspiring on a chaise longue, a tall glass of seltzer water at hand.

"Of course I shall not die. Johnny, could you draw up a stool and cool my face with my fan? I cannot seem to muster the will…"

"Then why are you always so ill?"

"I am not ill. It is the heat and the heaviness, that is all."

But she looked afraid.

"The baby is too big. How will he get out?"

"He will find a way – do not trouble yourself about that."

"I cannot see how. Unless they are to cut your stomach open."

"There will no knives involved, Johnny. Please, change the subject. This is making me quite faint."

He fanned on in sullen silence, resolving to ask Martha about it later.

That young lady's voice was heard from the upper floor, exclaiming loudly before clattering down the stairs.

"'Tis the master, ma'am. Captain Drood, home from his soldiering."

Johnny's fist closed around the fan.

Meg sat up, much too quickly, and clutched at her chest.

"Oh, my heart beats fit to burst," she whispered. "Johnny, go to your room. Quickly now."

But the door was already thrown open, a rather hot and dusty redcoat standing on the threshold, laden with baggage.

The first person he saw, darting across the hall to where Martha stood, her hand on her mouth, at the foot of the stairs, was Johnny.

"What the devil?" he demanded. "Where's my wife? No, stop there, you young limb of satan. Meg!" He raised his voice and roared the last.

"She's in the morning room, sir, where it's cool. Please, she's very near her time…" said Martha.

"Do you know, girl, how long a journey I have had, and how hot and tired I am, and how I have been thinking of the comforts of home? Do you? And I arrive here to find my wife has turned my home into some kind of rescue mission for brats. MEG!"

Martha followed him anxiously in the direction of the morning room. At the door, she turned to Johnny, who had scurried along in their wake, and waved a hand.

"Probably best you don't come in just yet, master Johnny," she said softly. "They'll have things to say in private. Come and help me fold the washing, there's a dear."

He had no wish to, but he could scarcely do otherwise, so he spent a grudging half hour with Martha in the laundry room, listening all the while for raised voices or signs of a summons.

"I'm not a brat," he said, helping Martha with a bedsheet.

"No, that you're not. You're a very good boy, I always say so."

"Why does Captain Drood call me one?"

"He is tired and hot," she said with a sigh. "He is out of sorts, that is all. Do you know, I'm dreadful thirsty. What if we get ourselves some fresh lemonade from the pitcher in the kitchen?"

"He will send me away," said Johnny soberly, sitting on the kitchen step with his glass of lemonade. "I wonder where he will send me."

"He won't send you nowhere," said Martha stoutly.

"I won't go to the parish. I won't. I'll run away to sea. Will you come with me? We could go to France."

"Heavens," laughed Martha. "I don't speak no French. And they don't like us over there, so I'm told."

"I thought they only disliked kings and queens. We aren't kings or queens."

"That we ain't." She put an arm around his shoulder and let his head rest against her bosom. "You're a bit young for a sailor."

"I can be a cabin boy. You could make the beds. Or hammocks. Is it hammocks?"

"I don't know and I don't mean to find out. I'm staying here. And so are you."

She kissed the top of his head.

Captain Drood appeared on the patio, striding up and down and peering into the gardens beyond.

"Drat the boy, where is he? Jack?"

"He's calling for me." Johnny put down the lemonade and made a cautious approach to the patio.

"Ah, there you are. Creeping about as usual. Go inside and talk to your sister. She has something to say to you."

He stormed off, yelling orders for a bath to be drawn, and not too much hot water neither.

Meg was crying, her face turned towards the wall, her shoulders shaking.

"Meg," he said, running to her. "What is wrong?"

She didn't reply for an age, it seemed, and he resorted to shaking her arm and pleading with her to talk to him.

Eventually she hauled herself up to a sitting position and reached for her handkerchief. The occasional table was beyond her reach and Johnny had to pass it to her.

"I have failed you," she whispered, fresh tears coursing down her cheeks.

"Why?"

Johnny knew that bad news was coming, and he was grateful for the warning, for now he could brace himself against it. He had known, deep at the root of him, that good things could not last, not for John Jasper. It was not the way of the world.

"Your very being is my failure," she said, or at least, that was what he thought she said because her words were by no means distinct.

"Captain Drood does not want me."

She looked at him, as if startled by his words, then dried her eyes, shifted herself into a more erect position and appeared to gain control of herself.

"There is no use in lamentation," she said. "What must be must be. Listen, I'm sorry. I must have alarmed you. Please understand that nothing terrible is going to happen to you. Oh, come and sit with me, you goose of a boy."

Johnny sat beside her, on the edge of the chaise and she folded him in her arms. This was almost more alarming than her tears, for Meg seemed to show most affection when he was in direst jeopardy. All the same, it was not an opportunity to be passed up and he submitted to her petting and hugging of him, wondering if it was to be the last such time.

"Johnny," she said softly, once she had had her fill of twisting his curls in her fingers. "How should you like to go to school?"

"To the National School in Cloisterham?" he asked, recalling Mrs Crisparkle's suggestion. It was the only school he knew of.

"No, not there. That is a school for rough boys. You aren't like them."

"Am I not? Then where?"

"I don't know as yet," admitted Meg. "It is Captain Drood's suggestion. He will add whatever money my parents pay towards your upkeep to meet the school fees."

"You must pay to go to school?"

"To a good school, yes, Johnny. And you will grow up with gentlemen and be one yourself. Then you can do whatever you want in the world. I am sure you will grow up to do something very wonderful. What would you like to do?"

"I would like to be a sailor."

"Oh, you wouldn't. Sailors are not gentlemen."

"What about Lord Nelson?"

"Most sailors are not gentlemen."

"Where will this school be?"

"I am not sure. And you can't start yet, anyway. Not until you are seven."

"So I may stay here until then?"

"Yes, you may. Captain Drood has said so. And in the meantime we will look for a good school for you."

"I shall only be six for four months more," said Johnny. "That is not long."

"I suppose you would start after Christmas," said Meg vaguely. "I don't know."

"Then that is half a year," he said jubilantly. "That is ever such a long time."

"No, darling, it isn't. It really isn't," said Meg with a sigh.

But Johnny, cheered at the thought that he was not to be sent straight away, had made a path for the piano, where he rattled away at a simple Schubert march to express his enthusiasm for being not yet seven.

Captain Drood would not allow him at the dining table, or suffer him in his presence at any time, so he spent the next few weeks drifting about the house and garden, keeping from beneath his nemesis' feet.

Relations between his sister and her husband seemed strained to say the least. At night, in his room, he sometimes heard the Captain's raised voice from below, booming out. Sometimes he heard Meg's sobs too.

One night, he crept out to the landing, curious to know on what subject they disputed. With the typical self-centredness of the young, he presumed himself to be the cause, and wanted to know why. His stomach was tense and painful with dread, but he could not make himself go back to his room.

"It's no use, Meg, the thing is done. You can't make me take it back."

"But what shall we live on if you leave the army?"

"I've told you. I'll go to Egypt with Timmins. He's making a fortune out there."

"I don't want to go to Egypt."

"Then don't. Stay here for all I care. I daresay you'll be glad to be rid of me, you and that moping weed of a boy. I won't have him in my house, though, Meg. You won't bring him back here, once you've found a place for him."

"Our child…"

"If he's a boy, then I've done my duty by you and my family and I need trouble you no more."

"Drood!"

"If it's a girl, then, devil take you. I don't know."

"You have hardened your heart."

"You have hardened it for me."

"I have told you…"

"I don't believe it. Your parents would have taken him to London by now if…by God. I've been a dupe. I thought of shooting myself when the thing first occurred to me."

"Drood, you mustn't talk so…"

"Then I shan't talk at all. What have I to say to a liar and a cheat? When my son is born I shall hire the best nursemaids to try and counter the taint of your blood in him."

"That is a vile thing to say."

"You are vile."

Johnny heard, from the approaching sobs, that Meg was on her way out of the drawing room and he hastened back to his room, expecting her footfall on the stair.

When it did not come, he crept back out, peering over the balustrade to see Meg bent over, clutching her stomach and gasping.

"Meg," he called down. "What is wrong?"

"Oh, Johnny," she managed to pant. "I have pains. I think the baby…can you fetch Martha?"

He ran to the maid's room and was promptly sent back to bed with strict injunctions not to stir from there until morning.

But sleep could not come when there was so much creaking of floorboards and passing of feet, calls for warm water and towels, summoning of the doctor, jingling of doorbells, the heavy pacing of Captain Drood across the hallway and, curdling Johnny's young blood, the heartfelt screams of his sister.

Surely she must be dying, he thought with rising panic. What if he never saw her again? What if he were left to the untender mercies of Captain Drood?

He ran out on to the landing, begging to be allowed to see her.

Captain Drood, seeing him from below, mounted the stairs two at a time, picked Johnny up and, reminiscent of that previous occasion, flung him back to his bed.

"Don't let me see your face again," he roared. "Keep to your bed."

Five minutes later, Johnny heard a key turning in his lock.

Meg shrieked on.

He turned his face to the wall and sobbed along with her, until there was a hush and then an altogether different sound. The high wail of a baby, turning to loud squalling.

Johnny sat up and listened, angry with the heavy rain outside for interfering with his earshot.

A door opened and he heard Martha calling over the banisters.

"You have a son, Captain Drood."

"A boy? And is he well?"

"Hale and hearty, sir."

"May I see him?"

"We're just going to clean him up for you and then you can come up."

Johnny lay back down and thought about this.

A boy.

He had been hoping for a girl. The idea of being uncle to a niece was strangely delightful to him, but he was not fond of boys.

Especially boys who were Meg's sons. They were his least favourite of all.

The baby woke him up at intervals through the night, so when Martha invited him next morning to see it, he was grumpy.

He peered into the bassinet at the red, scrunchy face of the infant and stared.

"Babies are quite ugly," he said, and Martha laughed and threw her hands in the air.

"Lor, I think someone's jealous," she said. "Babies are beautiful, master Johnny, that they are. Especially when they're your own flesh and blood." She looked over at Meg, who lay in bed, pale as death. "Be a good boy around your sister," she whispered. "She had a hard time of it last night. Go and give her a kiss."

He went and sat by the bed, took her cold hand and pressed his lips quickly to her fingers.

"Aren't you well?" he asked, fearing her reply.

"I will get stronger if I rest. The doctor says I lost too much blood, but I will be well."

"Who will look after the baby?"

"A wet nurse has been engaged. Captain Drood has gone to fetch her in the trap."

"Will he go to Egypt now?"

Meg made a huge effort and opened her eyes wide.

"What do you know of that?"

"I have heard him talk about it."

"He will go next week and return for Christmas," she sighed.

"But you aren't well."

She didn't reply to that.

"He does not love you."

Again, no reply.

"Come away, master Johnny," fussed Martha, taking his arm.

"But he can't do," Johnny persisted, clattering down the stairs after her. "Or he would stay."

"He has to earn a living," she muttered, but her heart didn't seem to be in it. "Or the babe and his mother won't have a roof."

Meg was still in bed, still as white as the sheets that covered her, when Captain Drood set sail for Egypt a week later.

"I am glad he is gone," Johnny confided to Martha, with whom he was spending most of his time these days, being banned from the nursery and Meg's chamber.

Martha kept her lips tight but Johnny could see words forming behind them and crashing up against the bumper of her teeth.

"Doesn't he want the baby?"

"Of course he does. But fathers have to provide for their children."

"He had a job. He was a soldier."

"It don't pay so well as, as, whatever it is he's doing out there."

"Making engines?"

"If that's what engineering is. I suppose."

"They make engines here. A great many. Captain Drood said they opened a steam railway line somewhere. I wish I could see it, don't you?"

"I don't hold with all that," she said stoutly, pegging the last sheet on the line, having drawn it through the mangle. "We've done fine well for years with horse power. I don't know as I likes all these newfangled tools for the farm labourers, and I know my brothers ain't keen either."

"They should prefer them!" he cried, mystified by this.

"It ain't the Cloisterham way. We're quiet folks around here. What should we want with all that clattering and clanking?"

"Or a steam boat," Johnny continued obliviously, captivated by his theme. "If only our river were wider, steam tugs might come up from London. I should stow away. But there is no need for that, now that he is gone."

Martha had ceased paying attention, busy with the baby's tiny articles of laundry.

"Aw, his little swaddling cloth," she said, running it carefully through the wooden mangle. "It's come out so nice and white. They are calling him Edwin, after Captain Drood, of course."

"Two Edwins."

"They will call him Ned, I suppose. Oh, mercy!"

She put her hand to her mouth on hearing a carriage approach across the garden.

"I had forgotten – Mrs William Bud sent her card this morning. I didn't even tell Mrs Drood. Oh dear."

"Rosa Bud, you mean?"

"Of course. Oh dear. I must warn Mrs Drood. And I haven't baked or…"

She disappeared like a hare chased by hounds.

Johnny wandered around the front of the house and went up to meet Rosa from the carriage.

"Why it is Uncle Jack," she said, beaming as she alighted on the coachman's arm. "How kind of you to come to greet me now that you are an important gentleman with a nephew of his own."

"My name is John."

Rosa sighed and took up Johnny's hand.

"Yes, yes. Now are you going to take me to your sister and that lovely son of hers?"

"She is quite ill abed."

"Oh no. Is she not out of her confinement yet?"

"No. You'll have to go to her bedroom."

"And how is the baby boy?"

"He is well," said Johnny offhandedly. "Very noisy."

"Then he must have a fine pair of lungs. Perhaps he will be a singer, like you."

"No," said Johnny, surprising even himself with his vehemence. "He will never be like me at all."


	7. Chapter 7

Such a mist had rolled in from the estuary that Johnny could scarcely read the shop fronts as they rattled past in the carriage. A few bow windows loomed from the greyish brown here and there, but Lumps of Delight's beautiful display was, to his great disappointment, invisible.

"I cannot even see the spire," he said, turning to his sister.

She had rallied somewhat by the end of the summer, but had never quite regained her strength or colour after the baby's birth. She spent a lot of time on the chaise-longue in the parlour, listening to Ned's anguished cries drift down from the nursery. Perhaps, Johnny had suggested, whilst sitting on the rug playing with the chessmen, Ned didn't like his nursemaid. But that had made Meg cry, and he had no wish to talk about that baby anyway.

He had spent most of the late summer and early autumn in Martha's company, becoming a sort of honorary servant, helping her with her tasks. If he was not with Martha, he was at the piano or in the garden with his kitten.

He could be found anywhere the baby and Meg were not.

It was peaceful now that Captain Drood had gone away, true enough, but it was a little _too_ much so. And Meg was so lifeless and said so little. It was as if she neither saw nor heard him, much of the time.

"No," she murmured, but he knew she had not listened to what he had said and was merely mouthing a sound. Her eyes were fixed ahead of her and she did not look through the window at all.

When the coachman pulled up by the cathedral gatehouse, Johnny only knew where they were by the clopping and neighing of horses at the nearby livery stables.

"Which way is it?" he asked Meg, who took his hand and drew him under the arch.

"I think, this way," she said vaguely. "I don't know it well, but the letter said the song school was…to the right? I think it must be along this path."

They walked across the graveyard, Johnny feeling that the dead souls might at any moment rise from their graves and lunge at them through the fog. The high wall of the cathedral with its great gloomy arched windows was visible now, albeit partially.

"If Captain Drood was to be killed out there in Egypt," he said, perfectly conversationally, "then I could stay with you."

"Johnny, don't. Besides, you should go to school. You're a clever boy. They will teach you more here than I ever could. Oh, I think it is those buildings over there, on the other side of that courtyard."

"What buildings?"

But as they came nearer, a grey stone edifice emerged by slow degrees, revealing first a clock tower, then a quantity of long rectangular windows, then a large arched door. The place looked like a cloister and, indeed, Johnny was to learn that it had been at one time the home of monks.

Meg let him pull the bell rope and listen to the rusty clangour that resulted.

A pinch-faced maid answered and made them sit on a bench in the vestibule while she went to find Dr Cross.

It was not an inspiriting name, Johnny reflected. Dr Cross was sure to be a crabbed and mean old man who beat the choristers and starved them. A burst of violin, rather atrociously played, interrupted this reverie and reminded him that this house was full of boys like himself, or a little older. He wanted to leave Meg on the bench and look into the rooms, to see what this place was.

Apart from very, very cold. He was shivering when the maid returned and bade them, rather sourly, to follow her.

They were shown into a large room, dank and old and lit by the grudging flicker of a pair of candles on the piano in the far corner.

A man sat at a desk beneath the window, but when he saw them, he rose and approached, smiling quite kindly. He didn't look cross. He was a bespectacled man in clerical black, his thin grey hair plastered down. He had an air of gentle amiability and he shook Johnny's hand just as readily as he took Meg's.

"You must be Mrs Drood and master Jasper," he said.

Johnny nodded while Meg muttered some words of assent.

"Well, well, sit down, please. Jenny, perhaps you could bring us some refreshment?"

They sat on the other side of the desk, Johnny looking around the cavernous room, at its rows of forms and shelves upon shelves of manuscripts.

"This is the rehearsal room," Dr Cross told him. "If you join us, you'll be spending lots of time in here. It's usually less gloomy than this – when it isn't foggy, that big window lets in a great deal of light."

He turned to Meg.

"I mentioned when I wrote that it isn't usual to try a boy out at this time of year. Generally speaking, we will audition boys in January to start in the Michaelmas term. But I do take due consideration of your circumstances and if, as you claim, the boy is gifted, we will bend our rule."

"So he can start after Christmas?"

"After the January holiday," he cautioned. "Christmas is a busy time for the boys."

"Of course. In January then."

"If he passes."

"Oh, he will."

"Ah, Jenny." The maid set a tray of warm drinks with seed cake down on the desk. "Thank you. Mrs Drood, before we look at young Johnny's capabilities, I just wanted to clarify what you wrote me about the child's situation. He has recently celebrated his seventh birthday?"

"A fortnight since."

"And your parents live in London?"

"Yes."

"And I believe your father is a member of the chapter at St Paul's?"

"Yes, that is so."

"I'm surprised that he didn't think of sending young Johnny there."

Meg took refuge in her teacup.

"He doesn't want him growing up in London," she said.

"Well," said Dr Cross, nodding sagely, "the stories one hears about the welfare of the choristers there do give one pause. He will certainly be better cared for here."

"I am pleased to hear it."

"You have stated that, if accepted to the choir, you wish young Jasper to spend all holidays at the school?"

"By my husband's request."

"An unusual one. We will generally only allow this for boys whose families are overseas, or who are wards."

"My husband will pay well, if it can be managed."

"And your parents?"

"They will not take him."

There was a long silence before Dr Cross said, "I see."

There was more of warmth in his voice when he said, "Come, then, master Jasper, let us hear you at the piano. No, no, I will play. You will stand beside me and sing."

"I can play."

"Well, you shall show me – but first I must hear you sing. This scale, if you please."

Johnny felt his nerves fade away as he repeated the sequences and patterns of notes at the choirmaster's behest. He was able to reach all but the very highest of them and then, when he sang the piece he had prepared, he felt sure that the choirmaster was favourably impressed.

"Excellent, master Jasper, a most pleasing tone – and you are able to sight read, I assume?"

"I am, sir."

"Perhaps you could play a little tune for me now."

Johnny revelled in the opportunity to show what he was capable of, basking in the positive attention of the choirmaster.

"Goodness me, you have never had lessons, I suppose?" said Dr Cross as the last note faded.

"Oh. Well, no, I have taught myself," he said, crestfallen at the man's instant and correct assumption.

"I thought as much. Well, there is much to unlearn in your fingering and the technical aspects of your playing, but you are clearly a young musician in the making. I should be very pleased to have a part in your development."

"So he can come to the choir school?" interrupted Meg, a hand clasped anxiously to her bosom.

"If he is willing." Dr Cross smiled at Johnny, who twitched his lips up in return. "I will need to discuss the matter with the school's headmaster, Mr Linney, and minute it for the Dean and Chapter's approval, but I can see no reason for any objection. And if there should be such, I shall speak strongly in his favour."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, you cannot think…" Meg was breathless and flushed. "For if not here, then I would have had to send him out of Cloisterham and I could not bear…" She made an effort to collect herself, shutting her eyes, then held out her hand. "Come, Johnny. Let us go now. We have taken quite enough of Dr Cross's time."

"Oh, not at all. You will receive a letter and all the particulars, all being well, before the month's end."

"Say thank you to Dr Cross, Johnny, you must say thank you."

"I…"

"No, no, no need. Please, it was no trouble at all. I look forward to welcoming you back in January."

Johnny, still rather stunned at the thought that he was to join that angelic choir in frocks he had both admired and ridiculed, allowed himself to be dragged out of the room by Meg, looking backwards at the piano and Dr Cross and the darkening space between them as he crossed its threshold.

"Thank heaven, thank heaven," muttered Meg, ushering them both back into the thick fog. It was less smoky, less apt to choke here in the wider precincts of the cathedral, but by the time they reached the gatehouse it had turned browner and hit the back of Johnny's throat like Captain Drood's pipe smoke, harsh and cough-inducing.

"But what you said about the holidays," he said, once he was in the carriage and no longer wheezing. "Am I never to see you again? And where shall I stay?"

"Of course you will see me again, of course you will. I will visit on every half holiday. I'll bring Ned too. The Captain says I'm not to, but what will he know, all the way over there in Egypt?"

"Why does the Captain hate me so?"

"He doesn't. He doesn't hate you, Johnny. It's me he hates. He does it to hurt me."

To Johnny's horror, Meg began to cry, a fast-flowing kind of crying like the bursting of a dam. There was to be no stemming the flood, and all he could do was sit in his corner and watch her, his eyes wide and fists clenched tight, until the carriage delivered them to The Lindens.

"We could run away," he said, once they were inside and removing their outdoor clothes. "You and me. And Ned, I suppose. But it's hard to run away with a baby."

"Yes, love. Much too hard."

She had stopped crying, but then she simply lapsed once more into that strange exhausted half-life, staring at walls for weeks on end until Captain Drood came home for Christmas.

It was at once both better and worse than the Christmas before.

Captain Drood would not suffer to have Johnny in his sight, so he spent his time with the servants. He was given pastry trimmings to make mincemeat tarts with and he helped the gardener to fashion the holly wreath for the front door. He followed Martha all over the house and when Christmas Eve came, they let him have a glass of mulled punch and laughed when it filled him brimful of spirit and good humour. They were more appreciative of his carolling than the family upstairs had been, too. If he sang _The Holly and the Ivy_ once, he sang it a thousand times.

"Proper little nightingale, ain't he?" said Martha, with a proud glow, as if he were her own son.

How would that be, to be Martha's son? No great future but a comfortable back-kitchen life and days spent out of doors mending carriage wheels or fishing in the river. He thought he might take to it.

His stocking this year was a darned old sock hung on the kitchen chimneypiece and he ate the family's Christmas dinner leftovers with relish, not minding the cold gravy nor the poorest trimmings of the bird.

As the light failed and the servants sat yawning and telling old jokes and stories in the dreamy interval between lunch and supper, Meg crept into the kitchen and beckoned Johnny out.

He had been playing by the fireside with his kitten, feeding it goose fat from a saucer, and was not at his cleanest or tidiest, but Meg embraced him nonetheless, then clicked her tongue at the smuts on her dress.

"They let you run wild down there," she said.

"It is because of you and Captain Drood that I am not upstairs," he pointed out and she sighed.

"I'm sorry. I have brought you your present."

"A present for me?"

He took the square-shaped parcel and tore it open, feeling that its weight and size presaged a book, but no. It was a leather case which, when opened at the clasp, revealed a brass fob watch and chain nestling in velvet.

"It is a man's watch," he said, looking up at Meg with an expression of vague confusion.

"You will never be late for choir practice, you see," she said. "Do you like it? I had it engraved."

He opened the lid and saw inscribed on the interior: _'To J.J., Ever in my affections, M.D._' He weighed it in his hand, enjoying the solid, grown-up feel of it. He had a man's watch. He was of man's estate.

"You will make me so proud, Johnny," she said. "When I come and watch you sing. For I will, often."

"The baby will cry," said Johnny dully, hearing the beginnings of a wail from up the stairs.

"I won't bring him."

"And you will visit? On half holidays?"

"At every opportunity."

The voice of Captain Drood growled above them. "Damn the woman, why is she never to be found when the boy cries? Confound her."

"I must go," she whispered. "Happy Christmas, my love."

Christmas and New Year were indifferently enjoyable, he supposed, but the week after the New Year – ah, that was a season of joy.

Captain Drood returned to Egypt at Epiphany, and Johnny spent ten glorious days above stairs. In that time, Meg scarcely left his side, suddenly so fiercely affectionate that he hardly recognised her.

The baby lay kicking and gurgling in his basket on the rug while he and Meg read together, played the piano and sang together, stroked the kitten and teased it with wool from Meg's work basket, ate every meal _à deux_ and even fell asleep after dinner, Johnny's head in his sister's lap, her thin fingers raking gently through his dark curls.

Why had she not been like this at Aunt Hetty's? The question ran through his head a dozen times a day – not with acrimony, for he was too busy enjoying his unexpected moment in the sun to ruin it with hard realism, but with genuine bemusement. He had often felt that she hated him, back in those far-off days, had rather begun to assume it, until Captain Drood had shown him what real hatred was.

Only one cloud blotted his horizon. With each day, the choir school grew larger and more distinct in his imagination, from a tiny, blurred miniature to a looming presence of great grey stone, casting its shadow over every moment he spent with his newly-loving sister.

"Must I go?" he asked, the evening before. "I do not know how to make friends. I do not like boys."

"Ridiculous, Johnny, of course you will make friends. They are nice boys from good homes. You will be a favourite, I am sure."

"I am never a favourite. I will be lonely."

"Stop it, Johnny. Plenty of people like you. Martha likes you. And Rosa Bud – she quite dotes on you. She has promised to come with me to hear you sing in the cathedral on feast days."

"Has she?" He brightened for a moment, then fell back into gloom. "Captain Drood needn't know if I don't go. He is in Egypt. Who will tell him?"

"Plenty of people. And then he will cast me out."

"Why?"

"Oh, Johnny, why? I can't answer that."

He felt the beginnings of tears, although he had worked so hard on concealing his emotions, especially since Captain Drood had taken to mocking them.

"I will never see you," he said.

"Of course you will," said Meg, with growing impatience. But there was more to it than that. She could not look at him.

"Meg, please let me stay, please. Don't send me away."

She stood and half-ran from the room, calling for Edwin's nurse to take the baby to bed.

He lay in his room that night, having had no goodnight from Meg, trying to imagine how tomorrow night's ceiling would differ from this one. And whom would he share his room with? And what sounds would he hear? Not the low chatter of the menservants smoking their pipes in the kitchen garden, nor the sound of his cat fighting intruders by the far trees. His cat. He wept into his pillow at the thought of leaving it.

The door opened soundlessly while he was thus occupied, so he didn't know that Meg had come in until she sat on his bedside and put her hand on his shaking shoulders.

She said nothing, and neither did he, but they lay side by side, he in his nightshirt, she fully clothed, until the day broke.

He kept dry eyes when he said goodbye to the servants, to Martha, even to his cat. Now it was time to face the world as a man, with a man's watch in his pocket and no skirts to run into and hide from the worst life had to offer him.

There could be no more tears. What was the use? And so he didn't cry, even when he turned around to see his sister at the gate, one of baby Ned's fat paws in hers, waving him into exile.


	8. Chapter 8

Johnny tiptoed across the Turkey carpet, closer to the fire which crackled cheerfully in this, the only cosy room in the house. On the mantel, a carriage clock defied the maid who had left him here, showing her promise to be 'two minutes' up as false.

His toes were as icy as the lanes outside and it took some while before the fire's heat introduced the creeping tingle of life to them. The door handle turned and he spun round, obscurely guilty as if he had been caught in wrong-doing.

He stood straight, hands behind his back, in the attitude he thought the headmaster would find respectful and manly, but it was not the headmaster. It was a ringletted girl, smaller than him. She stared and put her thumb in her mouth, then took it out again.

"You're new," she said.

"Yes."

"Where is Papa?"

"Is your Papa Mr Linney?"

She nodded.

"I am waiting for him. The maid went to fetch him."

The girl stepped a little way into the room, never taking her eyes off him.

"What is your name?" she asked. "I am Diana."

"I am Johnny. John."

"Oh, you can't use your Christian name here. It's not permitted. I don't know why."

"Then I am Jasper."

"Are you a good boy or a naughty one? I hope a good boy. I hate most of the boys here. They tease me and pull my hair. But I tell Papa and then he whips them and it serves them right."

"Does it stop them?"

"Mostly. Except Harrison. I hate him the most. I expect he'll pull your hair too. You are much smaller than he is and you have curls."

"He will not, if he knows what is good for him," vowed Johnny.

Diana's face lit up and she laughed.

"Will you fight him? Oh, do! I love it when the boys have a fight. Last term was the best ever, and it was about Phoebe."

"Who is Phoebe?"

"My sister. Harrison is sweet on her. But so is Wilkins. They're the biggest boys, nearly fourteen, you know. Phoebe is eleven. She don't like either of them but they don't care."

Before Johnny could respond to this baffling saga, a man came in behind Diana and frowned down at her.

"Where's Mama, Diana?"

"She has a headache," replied the ringletted one.

"Again? I suppose she is not coming down then?"

"No. She said to tell you."

"And so you have. Run along then."

She prepared to obey, but first she pointed at Johnny.

"_He_ is called Jasper and he says he will fight Harrison if he pulls my hair."

Johnny opened his mouth to protest at this blatant twisting of the conversation, but Diana had fled and Mr Linney already wore a look of grave disapproval.

"Take a seat, Jasper," he said in forbidding tones.

"It's not true," blurted Johnny, perching on the edge of a comfortable overstuffed armchair.

"My daughter is not a liar," said Linney.

Johnny ached to differ, but felt that, if Diana's hints about her father's readiness with the rod were to be believed, he had perhaps best hold his peace.

"I had hoped to begin with a word of welcome – and also to introduce you to my wife, who acts as matron here – but it is my unfortunate duty to commence with quite another type of word, it seems. A word of warning."

Johnny, furious, kicked at the chair leg and stared into the fire. If he spoke now his voice would wobble and perhaps he would cry. No, better to say nothing.

"We are not a school for pugilists, Jasper, but for choirboys. We are for harmony, for concord, for art and for God. To the people of the congregation, out there in the cathedral, listening to you sing, you are as close to the angelic choir as human experience will provide. You are cherubs, Jasper. If it is your preference to be a little limb of Satan, well, there are many other schools you can go to. If you intend to spend your time here glaring like a young bullock contemplating a charge, you will fail to prosper. Kindly look at me, sir, and take that abominable scowl off your face."

Jasper raised resentful eyes to the headmaster, gripping the arms of the chair for all he was worth.

"Yes, well, this isn't a surprise to me, you know," continued Linney after a pause to soak up the boy's hostility. "I have in my bureau a letter from your brother-in-law Captain Drood, in which he goes into some detail regarding your personality and temperament. We have our work cut out if we are to render you cherubic, don't we, Jasper?"

"Captain Drood," spat Johnny. The effort of containing his temper threatened to blacken his vision and tie his muscles in double knots.

"Your brother-in-law," repeated Linney, "and benefactor. He has charged me with the task of educating and civilising you and, let it be known, I intend to make good on my promise to him. When you leave this place, Jasper, be it at twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen, you _will_ be fit for the ranks of the heavenly choirs."

He gave the boy a chilly smile.

"Captain Drood tells me you have a dark and intractable temperament, but Dr Cross tells me you have musical gifts beyond the normal range. Let us see if we can cultivate one at the expense of the other."

Jasper chewed the inside of his cheek and tried to let his fury float upwards from his head, joining the orange sparks that snapped now and again from the fire.

"You will want to meet your fellow choristers," said Mr Linney, rising from his chair. "They will be able to tell you everything my wife could not, I am sure. About mealtimes and bedtimes and soforth. Come along now."

Once he was a few feet away from the fire, all warmth evaporated and soon its memory was elusive too as he followed Mr Linney up the stone stairs to the eaves, where the dormitories were situated.

No boys were to be found there, though each of the narrow little beds bore witness to belonging to somebody, trunks and clothes strewn upon the covers.

"Oh," said Linney, looking around in some confusion, then moving to the nearest dormer window and trying to look out, rimed as the glass was with sparkling frost. "I thought to find at least a few of them in here. They appear to have been disturbed in the business of unpacking. Well, let us investigate."

Jasper shivered, glancing over at the empty grate.

"No need for fires in the dormitory," said Mr Linney, noticing the gesture. "That is what bedclothes are for. Here is your bed, I think – at least, it is the only one with an unopened trunk upon it. Is this yours?"

Jasper nodded, feeling suddenly a little woozy at the sight of it there, all his worldly belongings, on that little cheerless iron-framed bed. He had known it, but now it struck him clear and hard – he was alone. His guardians were strangers, and none too welcoming at that.

He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, determined that this man should not see him cry.

"I suspect we shall find them in the kitchen," decreed Linney, about-turning and leading Jasper back to the staircase.

Linney's suspicions proved correct for, down in the far reaches of the building, beyond the schoolroom and the music practice rooms and the Linney's apartment and a large common room, a clamour of voices travelled down to the corridor towards them, growing louder and louder until Linney pushed open a great wooden door, studded with iron bolts, and ushered Jasper into a huge kitchen.

At once the noise ceased and boys stood and sat, scones in various states of transition towards mouths, staring in one direction. Behind them, a large drab-coloured backside could be seen bending over an oven, from which a great clatter of shovelling proceeded.

"I've one more lot to cook and then that's that." The voice came from the bent figure. "No more. And don't eat all the jam neither or there'll be none for your breakfasts."

She seemed to realise, later than might have been expedient, that she was no longer alone with the boys, for she straightened very suddenly, dropping the shovel to the flags, and it was a moot point whether she owed the redness of her face to the oven or the unexpected visit.

"Oh, Mr Linney, by heaven, you've set me heart racing. I didn't hear ye come in."

"So it seems, Mrs Broad."

"I thought, since Mrs Linney was indisposed and unable to have the boys in for the afternoon tea, I might…"

"Indeed, it's of no consequence, Mrs Broad, you do well. I am merely here to introduce a new boy. Gentlemen, this is Jasper. Make him welcome."

And with that, Linney departed, leaving Jasper apprehending how a fox felt when it was the focus of a pack of hounds.

He took a step back, but the door was closed.

Nobody said a word – it seemed they were all waiting for a big, well-built boy with red hair who was busily masticating a scone, but with a hand held up as if to indicate that he meant to speak soon and he meant to speak first.

"What do you mean, Jasper," he said, having swallowed, "by starting in January? It's not regular. Are you some kind of special, precious angel?"

There were chuckles and swift looks from one boy to another, as if to say 'this should be good'.

"It was Dr Cross who allowed it," said Jasper.

"So you are to be a favourite, then?"

"Now, Master Harrison," said the cook, in a tone too comfortable to provide real warning.

"This is choir business, Betsey," he said superciliously. "We are entitled to know all about our new…colleague. Scrawny one, aren't you? And a regular gypsy too. Are your people tinkers, Jasper?"

"No, they are clergy."

"Clergy?" Harrison's expression transformed instantly from bullish to ingratiating. "I say, I don't mean to speak out of turn, Jasper. Don't mind me, I meant no offence."

"What village does your Pa have the living of?" asked another big boy. "For there is no Jasper at the cathedral, to my knowledge. To yours, Harrison?"

"No, indeed."

"He is in London. At a large cathedral there – I believe it is called St Paul's."

There was a general expostulation of disbelief from all, apart from Mrs Broad, who minded her own business by the oven.

"St Paul's?" Harrison, it seemed, spoke for all. "You lie, Jasper. Why on earth are you here at a twopenny halfpenny school like this if you can sing at St Paul's?"

"Perhaps he ain't good enough for St Paul's," suggested his friend.

"Ah, that could be the nub of the matter," agreed Harrison. "Sing for us, gypsy boy. Let's see if we can judge."

"I don't want to," said Jasper, a little desperately.

"What's that?" Harrison cupped a hand to his ear, his brow menacing. "Did you hear something, boys? Sing. Anything you like."

Jasper, sensing trouble if he held out in his refusal, sang the first verse of the Old Hundredth, the first hymn he had ever learned.

The boys conferred in whispers as he enunciated each word. Mrs Broad looked over, approval on her floury face.

"Lovely," she said, once he had finished.

After a short silence, Harrison said, "Good enough for St Paul's, I suppose. So you must be lying about your father. Why would he send you here?"

"The London air is foul," said Jasper, and at that Harrison clapped his hands and shouted with laughter.

"Oh, you're _delicate_," he proclaimed, to general laughter. "We've had delicate boys before, haven't we, fellows? Do you remember Beasley?"

Another yell of mirth from all present.

Jasper, sensing that he should not wish to be like Beasley or suffer whichever remote fate had befallen him, cried, "I am not in the least delicate!"

"Oh, then you are hardy and may hold your own in a fight?" surmised Harrison, swaggering closer and bending to look Jasper in the eye. "Do I understand you? Oh! I say." He broke off, noticing the watch chain protruding from Jasper's jacket pocket. "Treasure. Who gave you this? Your sweetheart?"

"My sister."

His hand closed over Harrison's wresting it away before the bigger boy could pull the watch from his pocket.

"His sister," hooted Harrison's friend. "Bet she's a fine one. Will she read my palm for me?"

Harrison, who had been about to hoist Jasper off his feet by his lapels, turned and laughed at his friend's remark.

"Now, now," said Mrs Broad, barely audible above the raucous laughter and whistling and rude remarks about gypsy women.

"Will she, Jasper? Will she sell us some pegs? Did she steal this?"

He had whipped the watch and chain from Jasper's pocket and held it high over his head.

Jasper, too enraged to form words, let out a fearful, rending scream and swiped for the nearest weapon, which happened to be a toasting fork.

"Oh no, now you put that down," cried Mrs Broad, red-faced with consternation.

It was too late, for, whilst Harrison had little trouble removing the weapon from Jasper's grasp, the smaller boy was then able to take advantage of his distraction to fly at him, kicking and hitting with abandon. The other boys, far from assisting their comrade, closed in on the struggling pair, yelling and cheering, though one of them was prudent enough to remove the toasting fork from the melée.

"I'm a-fetching of Mr Linney," gasped Mrs Broad, running as fast as her lumbering frame would permit for the kitchen door, but if anybody heard her they didn't fully absorb the import of her words.

The chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" must have rung across the quadrangle and into the very precincts of the cathedral itself.

By the time it reached its height, Jasper's head had connected with Harrison's nose and blood sprayed all over the flags and the legs of the venerable old table beneath which their desperate engagement took place.

The shouts petered out, slowly, to a few ragged cries and then a murmur and then a still, awful silence. From the combatants themselves, little sound had been forthcoming except a kind of animal back-of-the-throat growl from Jasper and chaotic breathing from the older boy who, despite his advantages of size, weight, height, age, experience – everything that ought to count – simply could not dislodge the terrier-like child at his neck.

He was the first to raise his eyes from the fray and see Mr Linney standing in the doorway, Mrs Broad stretching her eyes wide behind his shoulder.

"What is the meaning of this?" thundered the schoolmaster, and even Jasper's deathlike grip slackened when he realised that the game was up.

"He called my sister a thief," shouted Jasper, whilst Harrison, breathless and furious, clutched at his nose and wailed, "He's killed me, sir!"

"Nonsense, Harrison, you should be ashamed of yourself. Who started this?"

"He did." Dozens of gleeful fingers, loyal to their bully king, pointed at Jasper.

"Took the toasting fork, he did," said Mrs Broad. "I feared for Master Harrison's life, I swear to God."

"Did he stab you, boy?" Linney demanded of Harrison but, on establishing that nobody had been ripped open, he was satisfied that this was no more than the common or garden variety of schoolyard scrap. "Harrison, get that nose seen to and show yourself outside my study after tea. Jasper, with me, please."

Sad shakes of heads and mock-sympathetic tuts followed Jasper as he rose unsteadily to his feet and followed Mr Linney, who was already out of the kitchen and halfway down the corridor.

"It seems," said Linney, dragging Jasper into the study by the wrist and slamming the door behind him, "that some blood needs cooling. Luckily, Jasper, I have a very good method for cooling the blood. Very good indeed."

Hours later – he could not have counted how many himself, but it was perhaps three – John Jasper was disturbed in his occupation of lying face down on his bed and sobbing into his pillow by the turning of the door handle.

He didn't look up but grabbed the sides of the pillow and crushed them to his ears instead, wanting whoever it was to go away, regardless of whether they came to offer mockery or sympathy.

"Jasper. Hey, Jasper. Are you hungry?"

He considered the question. He had not thought so, his stomach being so bound in knots of rage and agony and humiliation and loneliness, but he hadn't eaten in such a long time…

He let go of the pillow and moved his head just enough to see his visitor with one eye.

"You," he said. "Go away. I hate you."

"Hush, no hard feelings, eh? I daresay I should have let you be. Look, here's some bread and milk if you want it. The other fellows have all had supper. They'll be up in a little while."

He put the bowl down on the little table by Jasper's bedside.

"Wilkins listened at the door, you know, earlier. He says you didn't cry or shout out or anything. Not once, even though Linney was laying it on hard."

The grudging admiration in Harrison's voice caused Jasper to look at him fully.

"Your nose looks better," he said.

Harrison rubbed it ruefully. "Hurts like the devil," he said. "Listen, Jasper, I want to call pax. Not because I'm afraid of you or you've bested me or anything like that, but because I truly think that, if Linney hadn't come in, you might have killed me, and I shouldn't like to see a Cloisterham Cathedral boy hang. It's for the honour of the school, you see. Leave me alone and I'll see that you're left alone. What do you say?"

Jasper shrugged, returning his face to the pillow.

"I am alone anyway," he said.

"And so you'll stay if you don't give a fellow a smile now and again," said Harrison. "But it's none of my concern, I'm sure. Well, I'll be getting back to the common room then. If I were you, I'd be undressed, in bed and asleep by the time the others come up. Cheerio."

For a long time, Jasper thought he must be too stiff and too much in pain to risk moving, but eventually he slithered, sideways, off the bed and into a wincing heap on the floor. He held on to the bedpost and hauled himself upright, removing first one boot and then the other. When they were unlaced and on the bed beside him, he picked up one of them and threw it hard at the wall. "Linney," he whispered, watching it fall with a satisfying bounce to the floor. Then he repeated the process with the other, but this time the name on his lips was Drood.


	9. Chapter 9

Ash Wednesday, and the daffodils were struggling up all around the borders of the Close, eager to put an end to the supreme reign of the snowdrops. There was frost to be fought and an icy tinge to the wind that bent their incipient stems, but they were dauntless enough, with their crowns of sunshine yellow, to thrive regardless.

A crocodile of choristers hurried along the path to the cathedral, shivering beneath robes that flapped with every biting gust of the cruel east wind.

No longer the youngest of them, but still near the rear of the line, John Jasper folded his hands inside his armpits and tried not to trip over the hem of his too-long cassock. He had done that once, during a processional to boot, and he had no wish to repeat the humiliation.

Once inside, in his familiar wooden seat with the uncomfortably carved back, he wriggled forward, straining to see out over the heads of the congregation. Was Meg there? The cathedral was fuller than usual for the occasion, though not as full as Easter or Christmas, but he was still able to scan its rows of bonnets and beards from the front to the back before the end of the first hymn. There was no sign of her.

His throat tightened during the last verse and he found himself mouthing the words. Where was she? In the year since he had come to the choir school, she had never missed a significant church service, coming to sit and watch him sing every time, even though he had not as yet been given any solos. Sometimes he wished she wouldn't, for she often burst into tears and sat with her handkerchief to her face while he did his best to pretend he hadn't noticed.

The first time, some of the boys had teased him about this. His unlikely protector, Harrison, had seen that a second occasion did not occur. But now Harrison was gone, voice broken, to the King's Grammar, yet the general rule instilled by him – that Jasper was not to be disturbed – was still adhered to most of the time.

Of course, there was whispering and murmuring behind his back and he knew that they called him 'Pet', short for 'Petulengro' when they thought he did not hear them. But the ragging reserved for the other boys with shy natures or poor backgrounds was rarely levelled at him. They respected him in the manner that they might respect a tiger come to live among them. They were civil to his face, but they kept their distance.

He had no particular friend and he made no effort to cultivate any. He was sensible of being apart from other boys, unlike them in essence, and their society held no charms for him. Such spare time as he had was spent always at the piano, or in a quiet corner of the house with a book, far from the hurly-burly of the quadrangle or the playing field at the rear of the Close.

Sometimes he thought he might like to join in the conversations of one or two of the more sensible older boys, those with talent for music, but they scorned the company of a boy so much younger than them and teased him, asking him if he would come over with them to spy through the wall at the Nun's House school for they were sure he was as sly a young dog as they'd ever seen, which suggestion made him stammer and retire, blushing to the tips of his ears.

The Nun's House, indeed! What should he want with little girls? What a stupid suggestion.

The girls were seated now in their dedicated pews on the far right side of the nave, huddled in their capes, hands tucked into muffs, attempting to mimic the spiritual expression of their mistresses but succeeding mostly in a stony blankness of visage.

They were not at all pretty, thought Jasper scornfully. Who would want to spy on them?

The solemnities of the service were lost on the eight year old Jasper, who only emerged from his gloomy contemplations of a missed half-holiday when the choir rose along with Dr Cross to sing another of their pieces.

If Meg did not come, that meant he had to spend the half holiday afternoon with the Linneys, an intolerable prospect indeed.

Easter and Christmas had been spent in the company of the severe Mr Linney, his nervously-constituted wife and irritating daughters – although, perhaps 'company' was too strong a word, for Jasper had avoided their society as much as possible.

Never had he made such progress with his musical studies as he did during those nominally festive seasons. Hour after hour he toiled away at the keyboard, working through each manuscript in the library with a method and patience that astounded his teachers.

The hour after mealtimes, however, was the grim axe that hung over his holiday days. It must be spent in the drawing room with the family, where he must conduct himself in a manner becoming a gentleman, which involved playing games with the Misses Linney, neither of whom were gracious losers.

"Jasper has cheated!" was a constant refrain, leading in all cases to an inquest, requiring a full account of every move leading up to the accusation.

Should Jasper be vindicated – a rare event – the offending Miss was cautioned, with a fond shake of the head, to pay more attention to her game. Should Jasper be convicted – on an invariably trumped-up charge – a stern lecture on the pitfalls of deceit and cunning would follow, accompanied, if he ever dared defend himself, by a painful visit to the headmaster's study. He soon lost faith in the process of Linney justice and played strictly to lose.

Phoebe, the older sister, regarded him as a nuisance and a bore and consequently left him pretty much to his own devices. Diana was not so easy to avoid. She interrupted his music practices a thousand times a day, begging for him to take her into the garden and play at ponies.

Jasper, knowing as he did, that the surest route to an appointment with her father's rod was to engage in play with his small daughter, generally put her off as best he could. Diana would run, crying, to her mother, and say that Jasper had been mean to her – but as Mrs Linney preferred that her daughters should have as little as possible to do with the interloper, there was generally no repercussion from this.

If Mr Linney was available, which he frequently was not during the day, having positions on more or less every civic committee or group on Cloisterham, he would order Jasper to play with Diana and – somewhat to Jasper's relief – supervise the goings-on in the gardens. If he remained unfailingly meek and submissive to Diana's every caprice, Linney could have no complaint with him – and Diana was accordingly less demanding.

When he could, he sought every opportunity to slip out of the schoolhouse and wander alone around the Close and the streets, walking down to the river path on pleasant days. Here he might experience a glimpse of freedom, sitting with a book on the bank and watching the barges amble past. Sometimes he fished for tiddlers and took them back to the schoolhouse in a jar – a gift for Diana which she never failed to appreciate, although her mother always discreetly tipped them away before bedtime.

The summer holiday had been different. The Linneys had gone away and entrusted Jasper to the sole care of Dr Cross. A bachelor with no family of his own, the doctor lived in the gatehouse hard by Cloisterham High Street. Jasper spent a happy August with the middle-aged choirmaster, benignly neglected and left to do as he would. They sang and played each evening and Jasper was allowed to stay up as long as he liked – even midnight upon occasions – with his book and his candle. Most wondrous of all, he accompanied Dr Cross on a week-long visit to London and was taken to a series of Philharmonic Society concerts. The orchestral works of Schubert and Beethoven awakened his soul to possibilities beyond the keyboard and the harmony of voices. He was captivated by the expression of revolutionary fervour, of melancholy, of spirituality, of so many of the emotions that hid within his breast, suppressed by the habits of expediency.

Already, in the icy month of February, he eagerly previewed a repeat of his month with Dr Cross and wondered if he might prevail on the good gentleman to take him to the opera.

But for now, it was imperative that Meg should be here.

The service completed, the boys, high-spirited in anticipation of a short release from their everyday cares, crossed the green once more and soon enough the song school rang to the chatter and shouts of excited youth.

One by one, each child was withdrawn from the common room where they awaited their friends and relatives.

Finally, only Jasper remained. He stayed there, alone, for over an hour before Mrs Linney looked in and found him there.

Her face dropped and her tone was dull when she said, "Oh, nobody has collected you. You had better come to the drawing room."

Unwillingly he followed her, lumpen-throated and dusty-eyed, but as he trailed in her footsteps, the bell rang and his heart leapt, hard as he had schooled it not to. He was well enough versed in disappointment by now.

A silvery voice spoke to the maid, a voice he recognised.

"Rosa Bud!" he cried, breaking away from Mrs Linney and sprinting to the vestibule.

"Jasper!"

"Rosa," he repeated, arriving at the door and smiling at her, breathless with rapture. Even the sight of his nephew, wriggling in her arms, did not quite dispel the exquisite joy that her appearance wrought in him.

"Ah, and here you are," beamed Rosa, leaning down and setting Edwin on the ground. "Here is your uncle Jack, Neddy. Say hello. Say hello."

The boy said some approximation thereof, minus the consonants, but he showed no signs of recognising his relative and turned back to Rosa, wide blue eyes tearful.

"Excuse him," she said. "He is unsettled. Well, then." She held out her hand in its delicate kid glove to Jasper.

"I am to go with you?" he said uncertainly, looking back to Mrs Linney, who hovered behind in the shadows of the hall.

"I must ask what your relation is to the boy," said the headmaster's wife sourly.

"I am his sister's good friend. I'm afraid Mrs Drood is indisposed and asks that I might take care of her brother for this half-holiday. She has written her permission, if you would like to see it."

She handed a ribbon-bound piece of paper to Mrs Linney who grunted that she supposed it was in order.

"What is wrong with Meg?" he asked, free of the house and half-running to the gates lest his liberty should be curtailed before he reached them.

"Do you slow down," Rosa entreated, laughing. "Ned and I can scarcely keep up. It is nothing serious, merely a mild fever which, however, she hopes to spare Ned by having him stay with me and Mr Bud."

"Am I to spend the night at your house?"

"Yes, if you do not mind."

"Why should I mind? I should like it very much. But I wish Meg could come too." _Instead of him_, he failed to add, looking sidelong at the toddling child.

"She will be better by Easter and will come to hear you sing. Indeed, I shall do so myself. Nothing is more delightful to me than the music of your choir. One could truly think you and your schoolmates real angels."

"Then you should see us in the schoolroom."

They climbed into the carriage, Rosa holding Ned in her arms and laughing.

"Are you so different there?"

"Very much so. Gadge, that's the junior master, is so short-sighted that he never knows what is happening at all. The fellows play him up most fearfully."

"Oh dear. I hope you do not join in."

"I am not included."

He turned from her at that and took a studied interest in the streets – or rather street, for it was little more than one long winding thoroughfare – of Cloisterham.

Rosa cleared her throat as if she might speak more, but Ned began to wail loudly, having been jolted out of his seat by a pothole in the road, and her distraction shook all further pursuit of the theme from her mind.

She returned to it later, over what Jasper considered a banquet, before the fire in her drawing room.

"Do you manage to learn anything at all, in your classes?" she asked. "Meg is always telling me how clever you are. It would be a great pity for such intelligence to be squandered in mischief."

"I suppose I must learn enough to progress," he said, buttering a scone. "For I seem to do so."

"Well, then, that is good."

"No, it is bad, for if I progress too far then I shall be in Mr Linney's class, and I should prefer to stay in the younger boys' class for as long as possible."

"Oh, no, Jack! Surely he cannot be as bad as that!"

"He is almost as hateful as Captain Drood."

"No, I will not hear this. You must not speak so – and in front of the little one!"

If Ned had been perturbed by Jasper's words, he did not show it, being absorbed in pulling a teacake to pieces and dipping the fragments in jam. That most of the sticky preserve ended up on his cheeks and chin seemed to deter him not in the slightest.

"I speak as I find," said Jasper, echoing an expression he had heard Mrs Broad use in the kitchen.

Rosa looked aghast for a moment then she burst into peals of laughter.

"Oh, you sounded just like a little old lady then, Jack. You are a funny fellow sometimes. But you must not speak ill of your brother-in-law, truly. He is your benefactor."

"He pays for me to go away from him and his family," said Jasper blankly.

Rosa sighed. "I see we are not to agree on this matter."

Talk of music and books ensued, with Jasper educating Rosa on the former and vice versa on the latter. By the time Mr Bud came in from working out by the lake, where he was overseeing the building of a jetty for pleasure boats, Jasper was at the piano playing a piece by Hummel while Ned was carried off to bed in the arms of his nurse.

"Ah, our young guest," said Mr Bud with a paternal smile. "The chorister. Is it terribly difficult to hit those high notes? I sometimes fear for your poor throats."

Jasper smiled politely and came away from the piano.

"It's a matter of practice," he said, repeating the words that fell so often from the mouth of Dr Cross.

"I'm sure it is – I daresay any amount of practice would still be useless to me, eh?" He attempted a line from a popular song in an absurd falsetto.

"You are very silly," said Rosa, laughing indulgently. "But I think our visitor is tired. Let Ellen show you to your room, Jack. We must be up bright and early and ready to return to school tomorrow."

"Lent," said Jasper, his spirits slumping somewhat.

Jasper's neat little room had an interconnecting door to another, in which Ned lay, well bundled up, in a cot. He tiptoed over and looked down at the sleeping boy, thinking it both convenient and strange that the Buds should have a nursery so fully decked-out and furnished when they had no child of their own. Besides the cot, there were cupboards and cabinets full of baby linen and soft toys. A painted Noahs Ark and a beautifully crafted dolls house stood in respective corners. Draped over a rocking chair was a christening gown of fine white Brussels lace, with a matching cap.

Something about the scene struck Jasper as indefinably sad and a little alarming and he did not stay long, creeping back to his room to enjoy, for one glorious night, a bed wide enough for the stretching out of all four limbs.


	10. Chapter 10

Jasper couldn't help thinking that they had chosen a wretched time of year for a christening. If they had but waited until after Easter, they could have had flowers. But instead it was the hungry end of Lent, when mad March winds whistled through the West Door and all the colour was outside in the Close, mocking the stern interior of the cathedral with insolent petals of tulip and hyacinth.

But Mr and Mrs Bud were clearly oblivious to their poorly-made election, Rosa holding that very bundle of white lace he had seen over the chair in the nursery room just over a year before. Now, though, it contained a baby, and a highly indignant one at that. Beneath the cap of finest Brussels lace, the child's cheeks were flame red, her tiny face screwed up with rage.

Jasper supposed he would feel the same, if somebody had dipped his head into a bowl of cold water. Nobody had ever told him of his own baptism, but it was probably not much different to this. The church smaller, and the service officiated over by Reverend Crisparkle, but other than that…who were his godparents? He resolved to ask Meg after the ceremony.

But now he had to perform. Rosa had requested that he sing the Agnus Dei from Mozart's Coronation Mass, which he had to do unaccompanied, standing as they were at the back of the church, a way away from the quire and the organ.

He raised his eyes to the medieval arches above and opened his mouth. The first notes came out, clear and perfect.

The baby began to scream.

Rosa walked up and down, jiggling her in her arms, trying to soothe her, but it was too late. Edwin began to cry too. It was a relief to reach the part where the choir would come in, signalling the end of this impromptu solo version – all the same, those minutes seemed like weary hours.

"Wonderful, quite wonderful," rhapsodised the canon who had performed the service, and the rest of the congregation nodded and smiled their approval, but Jasper felt cross all the same, and as if his performance had been traduced by the infantile chorus against which it had had to pitch itself.

He looked at Meg, who was guiltily feeding Edwin lemon drops.

She met his eye with a quick smile before looking away. She was thinner than ever. Next to Captain Drood, who had come back from Egypt especially to declare himself as godfather to the baby, she was a wraith.

The new member of the Cloisterham congregation continued to bawl her displeasure until the assembly was broken up, at which point she abruptly ceased and fell into a sighing sleep on her mother's bosom.

Jasper, unsure as to whether he was permitted to mingle with the guests, looked over his shoulder in the direction of the vestry. He was pre-empted in flight by Mr Bud, who caught his attention with a jovial, "Marvellous set of pipes, Jack. One could be tempted to bargain with the fellow downstairs for such a gift. Not that I should be saying so in church, eh?" He laughed and Jasper, who liked Bud despite his being the luckiest dog in the world for having Rosa, granted him a faint smile.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

"Sorry about the littlest Bud on the branch – not a music lover as yet, eh? Still, not much wrong with those lungs." He laughed again, but Jasper was not so keen on the joke this time. Stupid babies, with their disregard for high art. "We'll make a singer of her yet, Jack. Perhaps you could teach her, eh?"

"I'm a little young yet, sir."

"Ah, ha, quite take your point, Jack. As is she, my boy, as is she. Anyway, I came over to invite you to partake of a few dainties with us back at the Grange. What do you say? Least we can do to thank you for your stupendous contribution to the festivities."

Jasper looked around for an authority figure to ask permission of, but there were none to be seen.

"I suppose it's all right," he said doubtfully. "I should probably ask Mr Linney, but…"

"Oh, it's just an hour or two. I'm sure they can't possibly object. Eh, Rosa?"

His wife had come to join Mr Bud, the baby having been taken outside by her nurse.

"Oh yes, you must come," said Rosa. Motherhood seemed to have had the opposite effect on her as it had on Meg. She looked more radiant and blooming than ever. "You are Rosy's godmother's brother. Does that make you something?" She pondered. "A god uncle?"

"I dislike being an uncle," said Jasper. "But I should not mind having a god-niece. Or perhaps a little sister."

"Then that is what Rosy shall be," laughed Rosa. "My goodness, she shall not want for big brothers to care for her, what with Eddy and now you."

Jasper privately doubted he would see a great deal of the newborn Bud unless she became the first infant girl to enrol in the choir school, but the idea pleased him all the same and he was in more buoyant spirits as he followed her parents out to the cathedral steps.

"I say, where are you going with Jack?" demanded Drood, waiting for his carriage with Meg, Edwin and Edwin's nurse.

"He is our honoured guest," laughed Bud. "But perhaps you would like him to travel with you?"

"No, no, you keep him," growled Drood.

"You sang beautifully," said Meg, blurting it as if to nullify the dampening effect of Captain Drood's words. "So beautifully."

"Humph," said Captain Drood, picking up Edwin. "Made you cry, didn't he? Hey? Poor Neddy. He likes to hear the dogs bark and the guns go boom, doesn't he?"

Jasper, mildly sickened by this display, followed Mr and Mrs Bud down the steps to their carriage with as much silent dignity as a nine-year-old boy could lay claim to.

Jasper was asked to play the piano while the guests mingled, which he did without demur, enjoying the opportunity to show off his progress to those who might be impressed by it.

Most impressed of all was little Ned, who wandered over and put macaroon-sticky fingers on the keyboard, introducing an unwanted bass E into the Clementi piece to which Jasper was treating the room.

"Go away," he snarled, trying to persist, though the correct sequence of notes began to escape his memory as his attention wandered.

"Me want to play," complained Ned, banging his fists on the keys now.

"Must you ruin everything?" cried Jasper, his cheeks heating with passion.

Captain Drood was at the instrument in an instant, scooping up the toddling boy.

"Stay away from that boy," he said, so fiercely that Ned began to cry. "Bad boy. Nasty boy."

He cast Jasper a murderous over-the-shoulder glare as he took the child out of the French doors into the back garden, despite the stiff March wind that blew.

The piece was ruined beyond repair and Jasper sat trying to compose himself while sundry guests murmured to each other over sherry and pastries.

He stood abruptly, slammed down the lid and went to find Meg, who was amidst a group of unfamiliar ladies all decked out in bright print gowns as if these might lure the spring onwards and flutter away the bluster and cloud outside.

"Johnny, aren't you playing any more?" she asked vaguely. "Everyone was so charmed by your skill at the piano. And your lovely singing."

It had been so long since anyone had called him Johnny that he almost wondered to whom she spoke.

"Your son would not leave me be," he said.

The ladies all inhaled sharply and regarded him with suspicion.

"Your nephew," said one disapprovingly.

"What a little darling he is," clucked another. "Such a sweet-natured boy."

"Neddy only wanted to see what his big uncle was doing," said Meg. She wasn't even looking at him. She gazed out towards the garden, where Captain Drood and Edwin were chasing around with the Bud dogs. "He meant no harm. Come outside, Johnny, and let us make friends again."

She took his hand and he reluctantly allowed her to lead him out into the garden. The wind whipped his curls into his face and tossed them all over. The fashion for long hair had its inconveniences, Jasper often thought.

"It was kind of Rosa to invite you," she said on the way across the lawn. "Please don't cause her to regret her forbearance."

"It was not kindness," said Jasper. "She wanted a singer. I am a singer."

"Johnny, must you be so…" She broke off, sighing and turning her palms up to the cold cloudy sky. "Go and make your peace with Ned. Tell him you are sorry. Do you want him to fear you?"

Jasper was tempted to reply that it was of no consequence to him, but something in Meg's eyes prevented him. Instead he cut through the gambolling dogs and approached the male Droods, father and son, both of whom turned to stare at him with no friendly aspect.

"You're not wanted here, Jack," said Drood gruffly. "Get back to your piano. We are for manly pursuits out here, aren't we, Ned?"

"Yes, Papa," lisped Edwin, clapping his tiny hands.

"Johnny has come to apologise," called Meg, following Jasper at a distance. "Please don't allow ill-feeling to fester. He was merely annoyed at being interrupted in his music – as you are annoyed when interrupted at your pipe-smoking."

"A pipe is a man's refuge," grumbled Drood. "It ain't the same thing at all. Music is for the ladies."

"Handel wasn't a lady."

"And he ain't Handel, nor ever likely to be."

"No, but he is a musician. Please, Edwin…"

Captain Drood sniffed and took up little Ned's hand.

"What think you, my boy? Shall we like young men who sing like ladies - and wear dresses to do it - to join us at our game?"

Ned giggled and squealed, "Papa!" He hid his face in his father's trouser leg and refused to look at Jasper.

"Get the boy back indoors," said Captain Drood. "He's upsetting Ned."

"Please don't set them one against the other," said Meg, almost in a whisper.

Drood roared, so unexpectedly that Jasper jumped backwards.

"And what's it to do with you, eh, madam? What right have you to try and stop me giving my own son what protection I can?"

"He does not need protection from Johnny," said Meg, weeping now.

"No, but from you, eh, madam? From you and your whorish ways." He had strode up close to Meg and raised his hand as if he meant to strike her.

She cowered and sobbed and Jasper placed himself between them.

"Leave her alone," he cried. "You, who call yourself manly."

There was a dread moment during which Jasper was quite sure Drood meant to knock him out, but he was saved by the appearance of Rosa Bud at the French door.

"Are you all happy out here," she called. "Dear Lord, this wind is very stiff. Won't you come back inside and take another glass of sherry, Captain Drood? Meg?"

Captain Drood released a breath and nodded, turning back to his terrified son. "Ned, come on. Let's find you another macaroon."

Meg disappeared to lie down in a darkened room, pushing Jasper away from her when he offered his company.

Instead he turned to Rosa.

"Are you all right, dear?" she asked, putting her soft, light hand on his shoulder. He wished it might stay there always.

"No," he said. "For Captain Drood treats my sister cruelly."

"Dear Jack, do not say so. Please do not say so."

"You must know it. You are her friend. She has no others."

"She will always have me as her friend, you may count on that."

He granted her one of his rare smiles.

"Your baby will play with hers," he said.

"Yes, Ned and Rosy will be like brother and sister. I am very fond of the idea of my little Rosy having a big brother to care for her – for she will be an only child for all of her life. But I have said more than I meant to. Come to the table, dear, and let me find you something to drink."

It was all very odd, Jasper thought, this business of marriage and children and how both were considered desirable for the complete and contented life.

Yet they seemed to make so many people miserable. If his parents had wanted children, why did they never have anything to do with him?

He thought back to the muttered conversation of the servant girls that memorable Christmas, whispering of bastards. He knew now what that meant – certain topics of dormitory conversation had confirmed its definition as the child of unmarried parents. But his parents were married, so what on Earth could they have meant by referring to him as one? Had they meant somebody else entirely? Or perhaps they had married after his birth – but surely not, being clergy. These questions revolved in his mind on a regular basis, but he had never quite summoned the courage to ask Meg about it, lest the answer should shake his already fragile sense of himself.

"Don't you want more children?" he asked, accepting a glass of fruit cordial.

Rosa's stricken expression showed that he had spoken injudiciously once more.

"Not that I understand," he continued hurriedly, "why people should want _any_ children. I'm sure I shouldn't want them. What noisy creatures they are."

"Oh, Jack," she said, half-laughing again, in a damp-eyed kind of manner. "You cannot know these things at your age. I hope you do have children, and that you rejoice in them. And that you marry a very lovely wife. These are all blessings, you know."

"People seem to think so, and then they behave in quite another manner."

"I have a wonderful husband and beautiful daughter and you can believe me when I say that I feel very happy with my lot. I could wish for more children, but God has not granted me that privilege, which is well within His rights."

"How do you know what God thinks about you having children?"

"Hush, don't be blasphemous, Jack."

"Does God think my sister should have a mean bully for a husband too?"

"I won't listen to another word of this foolishness. Where is my little Rosy? Has her nurse taken her away to feed her?"

"What does whorish mean?"

"Hush now!" Rosa was genuinely shocked, staring at him as if he had kicked her in the shins.

"I sensed it was not a compliment," he muttered, shrugging and trying to get away from the mortifying scene. He had made Rosa think ill of him and he could hardly bear the knowledge.

He sought out Meg, only to be told that she had ordered the carriage to be brought around to return him to the choir school.

"I do not like to leave you with that brute," he said, looking over at the tea table where Captain Drood stood, throwing Edwin into the air and catching him to make him laugh.

"He returns to Egypt tomorrow," she said flatly. "I have my friends the Buds for company and Ned to keep me in good cheer. Do not fret for me."

She no longer made any attempt to defend her husband, he observed. The façade of a decent marriage had crumbled beyond maintenance.

"Why do you let him speak to you so?"

"He has every reason to be as disappointed in me as I am in him," said Meg. "But go. The carriage waits."

He avoided saying goodbye to Rosa or anybody else and made a stealthy exit from the side door of the house.

Back at the choir school, the other boys had already congregated in the hall, preparing for a dash to Evensong beneath the hard, sharp rain that had started during his journey.

"Where the devil have you been, Jasper?" asked Mr Linney, observing proceedings from the open door of his study.

"At the christening party," he said, finding his usual spot. "The one I sang for."

"Why was I not asked permission?"

"Oh, I thought you were, sir," said Jasper innocently. "By the Buds. Was I mistaken?"

Linney frowned and then seemed to think better of pursuing the matter, since Dr Cross was marshalling the crocodile into a semblance of order, ready to cross the Close. He retreated into his office without further interrogation.

Jasper sighed his relief and, somewhat accidentally, smiled at his partner in the line, a boy named Walsh.

"The grub must have been good at that Christening," Walsh said, grinning back. "I declare, lads, Jasper just smiled."

A flurry of interested head turns and chuckles ensued, quickly terminated by Dr Cross leading them out into the rain.

Chanting praises to God in his seat in the front row right hand side, Jasper cancelled out the words in his head as he sung. God was _not _glorious and he was _not _merciful nor any of the other charitable things that were said of Him.

How long would it be before this nasty character was unmasked and seen for what He was? A fraud, nothing more. A remote wizard given to acts of random cruelty and kindness, just for the fun of it. He waited to be stricken down for having such thoughts, but the psalm sailed sweetly on without a single lightning bolt from above.

_See_, Jasper thought with grim satisfaction. _Who can say if you are even real? _

He took a breath and sang the final 'Amen' then sat down with the rest to join in the prayers.


	11. Chapter 11

Once the applause had died away, the elderly visitor cried, "And now let us hear dear Phoebe. Such a great girl now – how old are you?"

"Fourteen, grandmama," said Phoebe, inclining her head with its heavy fall of flaxen hair. "I prefer to play than sing. Jasper, you might stay at the piano and accompany me."

"Oh, dear, no." The bewigged lady on the chaise longue tutted at her granddaughter. "We must hear you play. I have heard so much about your accomplishments."

Phoebe baulked, and Jasper knew why.

Despite her four years of superiority in age, her technique at the piano was very much less advanced than his and to play after him would show her skills at severe disadvantage.

She should have played first, he thought crossly, or after Diana, and then she would have no cause to be giving him those daggers looks.

He stood up and came away from the piano, avoiding all eyes on the way back to his obscure corner at the back of the parlour.

Already he had earned the pinch-mouthed enmity of Mrs Linney, who thought that he had had quite enough opportunity to ensnare the attention of all during his solo at that morning's Easter Eucharist. Why must he lord it, at this Linney family occasion, over her girls with his detestable prowess at the piano?

He knew he was disliked by her, and by her husband, and by Phoebe, but at least he was beginning to have an ally in Diana, who grinned at him across the room the first time Phoebe stumbled over a chord.

He schooled his facial muscles not to respond by as much as a twitch. If he should be seen to be smiling at Phoebe's clumsiness, trouble would ensue.

"Very nice, dear," said grandmama distantly as the rondeau came to its chaotic end. But the applause was somewhat muted and Phoebe refused her mother's suggestion that she sing a folk song for them.

"Well," said Mr Linney, rising and clapping his hands together. "It is long enough after luncheon, I suppose, that we might take the air. Mother? Shall you join us?"

"If you don't mind keeping to my very slow pace," she said, putting out an arm for him to help her to her feet.

Outside the day was bright, showers having passed swiftly over Cloisterham earlier and left a gentle scent of damp flowers hanging in the air.

Jasper ran ahead with Diana at his heels, anxious to stretch limbs that felt cramped by the confinements of the day.

"Do you suppose Phoebe is very put out?" asked the younger Linney girl, breathless as they came to a halt by the graveyard gate. "You played so much better than she did."

"I expect it is forgotten," he said. "I hope it is forgotten."

"Your solo was good too," she said. "This morning, I mean. How did you reach that note? I couldn't, I'm sure."

She tried, her light voice cracking before she came near.

"I shan't be able to for much longer," he said, leaning against the wall and contemplating the vast west face of the cathedral with its tower climbing upward. "It will be only three or four years before my voice breaks."

"What a pity that it must," said Diana.

Jasper was not sure whether he agreed with her or not. On the one hand, it would be wonderful to be out and free of Mr Linney and all his works. On the other – where would he go? He had not the slightest idea.

Presumably Captain Drood's attitude towards him had not softened in all the years he had been mining the Egyptian lands, and Meg grew weaker and weaker. She would never stand against him, for fear of losing her Ned.

"Dr Cross would say so," said Jasper. "He has a high opinion of my voice."

"So he should."

"Sometimes," said Jasper, looking away from her, "I think that that is all I am. A voice, carrying notes, sounds, not my own."

Diana was silent for a moment then she made a derisive noise.

"Pshaw, Jasper, you look like a boy to me."

"I do not know what a boy is meant to be," he said. "Even less a man."

"Don't talk so. It makes me feel strange."

The adults, with Phoebe, had drawn close to them by this stage.

"What makes you feel strange?" asked Mrs Linney sharply, giving Jasper the unfriendliest of looks.

"Oh, Jasper is all mimsy-wimsy," said Diana airily, linking her arm through her mother's.

"I wonder what on earth you can mean," said Mrs Linney. "If he is upsetting you, dear, then leave him be."

"Jasper, return to the house," ordered Mr Linney.

"No," cried Diana, distressed at having caused trouble. "He said nothing to upset me. I am being silly, that is all. Don't send him back."

But Jasper well knew by now that Diana's defences of him only led to further entrenchment of the grown-up Linney position, and he had begun a slumping-shouldered trudge back to the choir school.

Diana found him some forty-five minutes later, sitting in the rehearsal room at the piano, although no notes were played.

"I'm sorry," she said, standing in the doorway. "It was my fault."

"Don't be. I'm not so fond of promenading with your family as you seem to think."

She came in, shutting the door.

"I never used to think anything of it, but Papa and Mama are rather foul to you, aren't they? Why is that? Perhaps I should ask them."

"Pray don't."

She came and sat beside him, making him shuffle up on the piano stool to make room for her.

"Why do you have no people, Jasper?" she asked. "All the other boys have gone to their homes. But you don't have one. Why not?"

"You know why not."

"Do your parents really live in London?"

"Yes."

"But you never go there."

"No. Save with Dr Cross. I have been there three times with him."

"And you did not visit your parents?"

"Diana, is this a court and you the presiding attorney? I do not have to answer all these questions. I have committed no crime."

"No," said Diana thoughtfully. "You haven't. Papa thinks you will, though."

Jasper's face contorted with scorn.

"Yes, well, he does tempt me," he said, playing a loud and strident minor chord.

"I am sorry he is not kind to you. Why do you not stay with your sister in the holidays?"

"My sister?" He played the opening bars of the Pathétique sonata, as if to illustrate his feelings on the matter.

"Yes, you do have one. I have seen her talking with you after services sometimes. And she comes to the door on half holidays. She is pretty but always very pale. And she has a little boy."

"My nephew," said Jasper, still playing, these words coinciding with plunging dramatic chords.

"You are an uncle, then." Diana laughed gaily, but the sound was incongruous, mixing with the tragic intensity of the music.

"Of sorts. Look, I came here to practise."

"Oh yes. Practise, practise, practise. Play, play, play. You will turn into a piano one day, John Jasper." She shrank a little beneath a very stormy look. "I am sorry. I will stop speaking and merely listen."

She put her lips together in a determined line.

Jasper had been hoping she would go away but it seemed that he would have to thank heaven for the small mercy of her silence while he played on, up to the point where he forgot the next few bars and had to stop and look out the score from the shelves behind the instrument.

"Do you think of me as your sister?" asked Diana, watching him from the stool. "Me and Phoebe?"

Jasper barked a short laugh. "Heavens no," he said.

"You see far more of us than you do of your own sister. And I think Mama always wished for a son."

He turned to stare at her, sheet music clutched to his chest.

"She certainly doesn't wish for _me_," he said.

"No," conceded Diana with a regretful shake of her head. "But I should like a brother and sometimes I pretend that _you_ are my brother."

"Why?"

He came to sit beside her again, riffling through the score until he found the section over which he had stumbled.

"Because brothers play better games. Phoebe will not play at all, she is so proud and haughty and likes to believe she is a grown lady. It is such a bore. Sometimes I imagine all the choirboys are my brothers. Or that they are the knights of the round table and I am Queen Guinevere and they must go and perform deeds of chivalry for me."

"Who would play the dragon?" he asked. "Your father?"

"Hush." She looked a little uncertain at that, as if questioning her loyalties. "Will you come outside and play at battledore and shuttlecock with me?"

He sighed, putting the score on its stand, open at the correct page.

"I have told you, I am practising."

"Oh, do come. It is so deadly dull when Grandmama visits. She will make me read horrid improving books to her if I go to the parlour. If we play, you can make believe the shuttlecock is somebody you dislike intensely. That is what I do."

Jasper rolled his eyes and followed Diana to the back porch, picking up the racquets on their way out to the quadrangle.

Diana's thought of picturing the shuttlecock as one's mortal enemy proved to be rather a happy one and it improved his game no end as he sent the feathered weight slamming to the ground time after time.

His younger friend danced around and leapt with excitement every time he struck out with vengeful force.

"Oh, you will break it! I say, what a good shot!"

Ten minutes into the game, Phoebe appeared in the doorway and watched wordlessly while the feathers flew until Jasper lost his grip on his racquet and it arced through the air, landing very close to Phoebe's feet.

"Sorry," he said brusquely, going to retrieve it, but she picked it up and held it away from him.

"Another of your talents," she said with an unfriendly smile. "A sportsman as well as a musician, eh?"

"It is only a game," he said, reaching out.

She threw the racquet back to the ground, so hard Jasper feared it might splinter.

"Foundling boy," she said. "That's what they call you. Gypsy foundling boy."

He picked up the racquet.

"I am sorry that I play so much better than you," he said. "Please accept my apologies, Miss Linney." Perhaps it was a cheap shot but it gave him satisfaction to see his target so resoundingly hit. She looked as if she might strike him across the face, but she held her spine straight and stiff and said nothing. "Perhaps you'd like to join us?"

"Actually, no. I came here to tell you that Papa does not think you should be playing outdoor games on Easter Sunday. You are to go to the parlour and read your bibles until tea time."

And thus passed another Easter Sunday, the clock ticking in the stifling room whilst outside the sun shone on the Close and children cried and bowled their hoops along the pavement.

From that day, however, Diana became Jasper's ally and she took his part whenever he found himself in opposition to any other member of the family.

The remaining fortnight of the post-Easter holiday was spent largely in her company. If Jasper had to endure endless games of medieval knights, it was worth it for the unexpected pleasure of not being alone all the time. She disliked the length of time he spent at the piano and she protested when he insisted on playing at chess or some other more intellectual pursuit, but she could be won round with promises of more derring-do tomorrow and so a friendship was formed.

Mrs Linney was quick to notice the new sympathy between her younger daughter and their unwanted guest and made every effort to suppress it. This added a quality of secrecy and excitement to their dealings which very much appealed to Jasper and so an alliance that might have faded with its novelty was strengthened.

While Mrs Linney was paying calls one afternoon near the end of April, they took advantage of their relative freedom to go out of the song school and play in the cathedral close.

"Let us go into the cathedral," suggested Diana. "I want to sit in the choir stalls and see what they are like. Oh, do."

"I am not sure," said Jasper, having no wish to spend yet more time in the edifice that had claimed so many of his juvenile hours. "I prefer to remain outside."

"Oh, Jasper, you cannot refuse a lady, you know," she said, repeating a familiar and irritating chorus.

"You are not a lady," he said, his stock response to this gambit. "You are a foolish little girl."

She took up the well-worn refrain. "And you are a booby."

They laughed and Jasper shrugged.

"I spend too much time in that place," he said.

"Have you been down to the crypt?"

He pricked up his ears and gave her a look of keen interest.

"No. Have you?"

"Once. It is haunted, you know. I would never go back down there on my own, but if you were to come with me…"

"All right," said Jasper. "But won't it be locked?"

"I saw the stonemason go in not ten minutes since. He will probably be down there and the door will be unlocked. As long as we can keep out of his way, we should be safe enough."

"He may see us and give chase."

"I heard Papa and Dr Cross talking about how he is a drunkard. He probably isn't very fleet of foot."

An element of jeopardy added to the mission's charm and Jasper found himself consenting to Diana's scheme.

The vast and echoing chamber was quite empty but from below the rhythmic tapping of a chisel on stone travelled up. Diana ran up the central aisle and past the lectern to the quire, Jasper following at a slower pace.

"This is where you sit, isn't it?" she said, wreathed in smiles, leaning over the front of the stalls.

"Yes," he said.

"The seats behind are more interesting. Those carvings!"

She moved to the rear row to investigate the gargoyles and demons and sad whipped choirboys immortalised there.

"Misericords," he said.

"Is that what they're called. You should most certainly have one, then. The very word seems to suit you."

"Oh, thank you so much."

"What? It does. Misery chord. That's you."

Perhaps she was right, he thought despondently. His life was made of misery and chords.

"Only the lay vicars can sit in the back row," he told her. "The choristers have to stay at the front."

"Do you think you will be one?"

"A lay vicar? I hope not."

"Don't you like singing in the choir?"

"It is not a question of liking it or not. It is what I must do."

"But you sing so beautifully! Surely it must give you pleasure."

"As much pleasure as a good pie gives a cook, perhaps. For the pleasure is meant for the congregation, just as the pie will be enjoyed by the cook's employers."

Diana was nonplussed by this, running her small hands over the carved angels on the end of the pew.

"You are the gloomiest person I ever met," she said eventually. "Come, let's try the vaults. They should please a person of your disposition."

Jasper shivered, creeping down the stone steps ahead of Diana into a realm of damp and cobwebs. The dull sound of the hammer and chisel fell like blows now, filling the dust-thick air.

It was dark, but he could make out a dim passage full of stone arches, each one barred with a great wrought-iron gate. Keeping away from the source of the noise, they whispered and tiptoed past each vault, peering in at the tombs and noting the family name on each.

He stopped at the one marked 'Bud' and stared.

"What is it?" hissed Diana.

"I know this family," he whispered back. "I sang at their baby's christening last year."

"They are an old Cloisterham family, I think," she said. "You can see. Some of these tombs are medieval."

He wrapped his fingers around one of the bars and pulled, wishing it might open so he could explore further. The slight rattle coincided with the cessation of the chiselling.

"Who's there?"

The growl came from close quarters, perhaps around the corner.

Jasper and Diana took to their heels, pattering rapidly along the passage and up the stairs before the stonemason could think to give chase.

At the top of the stairs Jasper ran full tilt into a man's chest, winding him.

"Bless me," spluttered the man, whom Jasper now recognised as the verger, Tope. "What are you a doing of, you little varmints. Get out!"

"It's all right, Mr Tope. I'm one of the choristers," said Jasper.

"Chorister or not, you've no business to be down those steps."

"We were curious, that's all," contributed Diana. "We heard there were ghosts down there."

"Lot of nonsense," said Tope, shaking his head. "The only spirits you'll find in those vaults are in Mr Durdles' lunch pail. Now be off with you, or I'll have a word to say to your Pa, young Miss."

They fled, laughing at their near escape but, despite the brush with trouble, Jasper had a strong desire to return and inspect the crypt at greater leisure.


	12. Chapter 12

Rain and tears, so similarly constituted and yet so different. One cold, one warm; one flavourless, one salty. One gave you a headache, the other only wetted your clothes.

Jasper had wept when he was told the news by an alarmingly sympathetic Mrs Linney but now, here, with Drood and those mockeries of parents watching him, he would be damned if anything more than the evidence of the cloudburst would damp his cheeks.

Drood held a handkerchief to his face to conceal his lack of emotion. Young Edwin wept quite enough for two, or even more, his desolation touching even the uncle who harboured so little love for him. Four years old and motherless now, the blond boy had his first taste of suffering. It softened Jasper's heart for moment, even if the plaintive volume of the child's grief was hard to bear.

At least the Buds had not brought their offspring – doubtless she would have joined in. As far as Jasper could make out, the tiny Bud existed in a permanent state of red-faced tantrummy rage. It was as well that her mother was so serene, he thought, casting a surreptitious glance at the black-clad beauty. Her handkerchief was held to her eyes, just like Drood's, but it concealed real tears. Meg's only true friend, the one who had comforted her darkest hours, Rosa Bud seemed more like an angel than ever to him now that his sister was gone.

Angels. Heaven. Of course, he didn't believe in that nonsense as a matter of course, but he had suspended his disbelief in the days since Meg's death, hoping against hope that she was somewhere kind, experiencing happiness.

The vicar's droning recitation ended and Captain Drood stepped forward to cast the first sod upon the coffin. Everybody's eye was upon him and only Jasper noticed the boy, stumbling forward in imitation of his father until he lurched at the very edge of the grave.

"No," cried Jasper, seizing him by the arm and dragging him back from the precipice. "You will fall in."

"I want mama," bellowed Edwin, kicking Jasper in the shin.

"Ouch, you brat," gasped Jasper, letting go of the child to bend double and clutch at his injury.

A furious-faced Drood snatched up his son and clasped him to his breast, squeezing half the life from him so that he could scarcely breathe out his sobs.

Mourners, throwing flowers down upon the casket, tried not to be disturbed by the little altercation. When Jasper's turn came to inter a rose with his sister's body, he was reminded of when aunt Hetty died, and how curious he had found it that one gave flowers to the dead. He looked dully down at the forlorn, rain-sodden petals, finding them depressingly appropriate. A crushed flower, cut off too soon.

He was still staring down into the grave when a hand fell on his shoulder.

"Come, old fellow. You will catch your death standing about in this rain. We must leave now."

He allowed Mr Bud to lead him away, the pair of them trudging through the ankle-deep wet grass at some distance behind the other mourners.

"He should have had her buried in the vault," said Jasper. "The Drood vault, in the cathedral. Why did he not?"

"Oh." Bud was surprised by the question and did not seem able to provide an answer. "I don't know."

"I go down there sometimes. I have seen them all."

"Rather a morbid occupation for a boy your age…how old are you now?"

"Eleven. I do not think it morbid. Death is a part of life."

Bud chuckled uncomfortably. "I daresay, young man. You did right, you know, in bringing Ned back from the edge of the grave. Drood is not himself, but I'm sure he will express his gratitude to you later."

"I'm sure he will not. And his son gave me the only reward I can expect."

Jasper exaggerated his limp for effect.

"Ah, be fair, Jack. He has lost his mother."

"At least he knew her," muttered Jasper, narrowing his eyes at the dark-shawled back of the woman he was supposed to regard as his maternal parent.

Bud was lost for words again. They left the graveyard and passed under the gatehouse arch. The carriages waited in a sombre row, waiting to convey the mourners back to the Drood residence for refreshments.

"You will travel with Rosa and I, I hope?"

"If you don't mind."

Too much to ask that any blood relative might want his company, he supposed. The Jaspers had climbed in with the Droods, Mrs Jasper showing every sign of doting on young Edwin. She had not spoken a word to him, her own son, since they first met on the cathedral steps.

"I understand why you did not want to sing," said Rosa, putting her hand over his as he sat down by her side. "But I do wish you could have brought yourself to. It would have been such a great tribute to Meg, who loved to hear it."

"I do not think my voice would have held," he confessed. Her hand on his. He gazed down at it, at the slender fingers and the gold band.

"It is not surprising," she said. "You poor creature. She cared for you. You do know that she cared for you, don't you? I think perhaps you do not realise quite how much."

"I was angry with her," he said. "For marrying Drood. And I was right to be. But I do not blame her for it any more, as I used to."

"That is good. Forgiveness is always good."

"I could forgive her anything. But I will never forgive her husband."

Bud, shutting the carriage door, frowned at his young guest.

"Now, now, Jack. This is not the time or the place for recrimination. We have just buried your sister. Let us respect her memory."

"She should have had respect in life!" cried Jasper, but Bud's visage was forbidding and Rosa withdrew her hand from his.

He put his own free hand over it, bereft at the sudden chill.

They were Drood's friends first, Meg's second. Traitors.

He stared through the window for the rest of the journey.

At the Drood home, Edwin was feeding potted meat sandwiches to the dogs under the table, unnoticed by all except Jasper, who kept to the edge of the room, avoiding the necessity of polite conversation. He did not feel able to converse politely with people who probably hadn't cared a straw for Meg and were here only to support Drood in his false grief.

Most of all, he was anxious to stay out of the orbit of those strange and unnerving people, the Jaspers.

The best policy, he decided, was to join Edwin and the dogs under the table. He crawled through the cloth and hissed at the child, who flung a half-eaten sandwich at him.

"G'way," he said.

"Ned, I am your friend," said Jasper, crawling closer. "I stopped you falling into that grave earlier. You have lost your mother and I my sister."

"Who is your sister?"

"Your mama, Ned. They are one and the same."

"She wasn't your sister. You're a liar."

"Of course she was."

"She wasn't! She was my mama! She was my mama!"

His hysterical wailing filled the room and Jasper realised the inevitability of being blamed for the child's upset unless he vacated the scene with all due haste.

He crept back out, accidentally putting his hand on somebody's shoe in the process. The person let out a little scream and kicked his hand off.

He scrambled to his feet and found himself apologising to the woman who called herself his mother.

"Whatever were you doing down there?" she demanded. "What kind of mischief can you find to make at a funeral gathering?"

"I went to comfort Edwin. He is under the table with the dogs."

"Poor little boy. Comforting, indeed. He cries fit to wake the…" She swallowed and bent to try and coax her grandson from his hiding place.

"Ned. My little Neddy. Come to grandmama now."

He seemed reluctant and Jasper watched his mother reach in and yank the yelling boy out. She lifted him up and held him and cooed with a tenderness that sat rather oddly on her narrow shoulders but Edwin was beyond consolation. In the end only his father could pacify him, taking him away into the garden to splash in the puddles now that the rain had ceased.

"He is an excellent father to the boy," remarked Mrs Jasper.

She looked back at her offspring, a shade guiltily, as if she knew exactly what he might say in response.

There were too many barbed answers to choose from, so he chose none.

"Why don't you ever come and visit me?" he said instead, taking pleasure in the discomfort his question created.

Mrs Jasper fidgeted with her necklace and looked hectically around the tea table, seeking a reply amid the cold meats and pickles.

"We are here to mourn poor Margaret," she said. "Your question is poorly timed."

"When else should I ask it, since you are never here?"

"Is it any wonder, if that is how you address me? Poor dear Margaret at least understood the niceties."

"Why did you send us away?"

"The country air…" said Mrs Jasper vaguely, then Captain Drood returned with a copiously mud-splashed Edwin and she hailed the pair with palpable relief.

"Dear Captain Drood," she gushed, laying her hand on his forearm in case he was thinking of eluding her. "We have both lost a cherished and dear one. You must be sure that, should you need a fellow soul to reach out to in your loss, I would count it my honour and privilege to supply that requirement."

"You're very good, I'm sure," he said brusquely.

"As for the child," she said, dropping her voice. "Who better placed to care for him while you are in Egypt than his grandparents?"

Jasper could not prevent his jaw from hanging open at this.

"But the London air," he blurted.

She ignored him.

"I thank you for your offer," said Captain Drood, "but the affair is settled. Ned will be cared for by his godparents, my good friends the Buds, while I continue the work of establishing my engineering business overseas."

"Oh, the Buds," said Mrs Jasper, her face falling somewhat. "I see."

"They have a small daughter of their own, so Ned will have company. He's been cooped up here with nobody but Meg and the servants for far too long. You will like to have little Rosa to play with, won't you, my boy?"

"She's silly," said Edwin, pouting.

Drood put him down on the floor, laughing self-consciously. "They are firm friends when Ned is in the mood to be," he said.

"She is always cross with me. She hits me."

"What's this, son? You allow a little girl to hit you?"

"I hit her back."

"That won't do, Ned. You can't hit girls, you know, however much you might wish to."

"Or women," said Jasper pointedly.

Drood gave him a momentary glare then reverted to the game both he and Mrs Jasper were playing of pretending the boy didn't exist.

"Until he is old enough to go to school, he will stay with the Buds and come home to me at Christmas and for the month of August."

"I am relieved, at least, that you did not consider taking him to Egypt."

"Oh, I did consider it. But he will be perfectly all right with old Bud and his lady wife, I don't doubt."

"Please bear in mind, Captain, that the boy is always welcome to visit us in London, should the Buds need some respite."

"And what about me?" asked Jasper. "Am I welcome?"

Mrs Jasper looked as if she had swallowed something disgusting.

"Why don't you run along to the piano and play something for us, John?" she suggested.

"I don't care to," he said, suddenly roused to fury.

The little flurry of attention this precipitated brought the Reverend Jasper into the little group.

"Is anything amiss?" he asked, frowning at young Jasper.

"How can you ask what is amiss?" The boy's voice, usually so bright and clear, was low and harsh. "Your daughter is dead. And your son might as well be, for all the attention you pay him."

He turned his back upon them and, despite his earlier protestation, stalked to the piano. The lament of Dido from Purcell's opera filled the room, mournful and beautiful, causing most to put aside their pound cake and reflect on the transience of existence.

Jasper took comfort in the way all conversation stopped and his voice commanded the room into silence. Here was where he was master of his domain, bending all to his will by the power of his astonishing talent.

"Remember me," he sang, determined that the note should not crack to admit grief. "But ah, forget my fate."

_Yes, remember me, you humbugging Jaspers, so religious to the world, so heartless to your own._

_And remember me, Captain Drood, who sent her to an early grave._

_And remember me, all of you who talk behind your hands of me without caring a straw whether I should live or die. _

_Whatever my fate might be, remember me._

The song was a race against the lump that grew in his throat as he rendered it, but he attained the final note triumphantly and swallowed the lump down.

Uncertain applause mingled with murmured conversation.

From the corner where the Jaspers stood in conference with Captain Drood, he heard the words, "The boy certainly has a future in music, should he choose such a path" from his father.

Why did he leave it to him to choose? Surely fathers were supposed to steer their sons into suitable careers. Should he not wish for him to take orders? To attend a good school and a great university? Why was his own son's future a matter of such indifference to him?

He played right hand exercises, almost unconsciously, needing the activity to keep him calm. While he was thus employed, Rosa Bud approached him, holding young Edwin by the hand.

"Ned would like you to show him how to play." Rosa lifted Edwin on to seat beside Jasper, forcing him to move up.

"His hands are too small," said Jasper.

"Jack, please. You have both lost somebody dear and precious to you. Can you not find it in your heart to show some pity, as it is shown to you?"

"By whom? By whom is it shown to me?"

"By me. And by Mr Bud. We are so sorry. I have talked with Mr Bud about it and he agrees with me that we should visit you on half-holidays now that…nobody else can."

Jasper's face lost its sullen cast for a moment and he looked up at Rosa, finding her more angelic than ever.

"Will you?"

"Yes, of course. We will bring Ned and little Rosy. You will all be such good friends."

Jasper wasn't convinced of this last, but he had no wish to cause Rosa to regret or alter her decision so he nodded.

"Thank you," he said. "It will mean a great deal to me."

"I know. As your sister's friendship meant a great deal to me. I believe we must always repay our debts in this life and I owe her so much. At my darkest times, she was at my side. And she spoke of you incessantly, Jack. I hope you know how you were loved by her."

"By her alone," said Jasper.

"Don't. Your heart will close up. Don't lock yourself away from those who mean well."

"I scarcely know how to recognise them," he said.

"Well, here is one." She indicated herself, then ruffled Edwin's hair. "And here is another. He has been so patient, what a good boy you are, Neddy. Yes, now your uncle will show you how to play the notes."

Rosa swished away and Jasper was left to give his nephew half-hearted instruction on how to play a scale.

"I want to learn a song Mama used to play," he said. "Can you teach me?"

"What is it?"

"Little Boy Blue."

"She used to sing that to me. When I was very young." Jasper turned to Edwin. "Your age. Before she married _him_."

"Before Papa was alive?" Edwin furrowed his brow, blond hair tumbling over and into his eyes.

"No, you goose. He was alive. She had not yet met him."

"They used not to know one another?"

"Correct."

"I did not know. What did she do? Was she a girl?"

"Yes, she was a girl, I suppose. She must have been young. About Phoebe's age."

"Who is Phoebe?"

"A disagreeable girl at the school I attend. Yes, she was young but she did not seem so to me, for I was very small, like you."

"Did you live with grandmama?"

"No."

"That's strange."

The dramatic way in which the child couched the phrase made Jasper smile.

"Yes, it is, rather. I do agree. But I must try to recall this tune and decide in which key it should be played."

"Do you need a key to play the piano?"

"No, no, the key is…oh, you would not understand. It is to do with the notes."

"Is it very difficult?"

"Fearfully difficult. Too difficult for you."

"No it isn't!"

Edwin smashed his small fists on the keyboard in demonstration of his untapped talent. The loud discord brought Captain Drood hurrying over.

"Ned, you will break the strings," he scolded. "Jack, isn't it time you were getting back to school?"

"I am excused Evensong."

"Nonetheless, I shall have the carriage brought out. It will rain again ere long and I don't want Travers to take cold. Go and say your farewells, boy."

But there was nobody to say farewell to – nobody with whom he wished to exchange speech, at least, and so he took his cap and his jacket and went to stand on the front steps, watching the clouds break up and join back together and wondering if Meg might be anywhere up beyond the skies.

"Remember me," he said.


	13. Chapter 13

On the piazza outside St Paul's Cathedral, pigeons strutted and bobbed their heads, walking right up to their feet without a qualm.

"Don't feed them," fussed Dr Cross, taking a rogue crust of bread from one of the smallest boy's hands.

John Jasper was only peripherally aware of the little altercation, his neck craned high in contemplation of Wren's enormous dome. This was where he should live and should sing. This was his real homeland.

How different from Cloisterham with its quiet Close and everything old and grey. Here every shade and character of life eddied around the majestic fixed point of St Paul's, the vortex of time surrounding the stillness of history. To be a chorister here would be a fine thing indeed.

"Now, gather round and listen well," instructed Dr Cross. "Our place in the festival is fourth of twelve choirs. While we wait our turn, we are to sit in the designated pews and listen, without fidgeting or fussing, to the other choirs. When we are called, you will process to the quire in your usual formation, except today I must have the soloists at the front of the line. Jasper, Riddings, here, please."

Jasper and his fellow soloists broke through the tight knot to head the line.

"You're excitable, of course," said Dr Cross, "but pray keep your high spirits in check until the festival is ended, and then you may join our hosts in the chapter house for what I am promised will be a marvellous spread. Are we ready?"

The boys, eager as puppies, bounced on their feet and nodded and cried 'Yes, sir' in piping little voices.

Despite their heartfelt promises to their director, many – especially the smallest – could not keep from gasping and elbowing their neighbours when they walked into the church and absorbed the splendour of their surroundings. Every pair of eyes looked up into the huge dome as they passed underneath, leading to some tripping and shoving of an inadvertent nature. All was in order by the time they reached their pews, however, and they settled down with hands demurely folded and eyes to the front, enjoying the opportunity to see a church from the congregational vantage for once.

Jasper's enjoyment was sullied, however, by the presence of people he would rather not see. The Reverend Jasper and his wife passed along the aisle, oblivious to him, ready to take their place with the representatives of the host cathedral.

The sight of them made him kick the bench in front, earning a reproving look from Dr Cross.

He settled back with his arms folded and tried to rid his mind of the nagging consciousness of the older Jaspers. There were, after all, eleven choirs to sit through, as well as their own performance to think of.

His resolve soon turned to a stomach-twisting dismay, however. The choir of St Paul's were first to sing and it became very clear to Jasper very quickly that this was a choir far superior to his own. He sat forward, straining to work out how they achieved such roundness of tone, such clarity and precision of enunciation, such a uniquely spiritually uplifting effect when all was taken together. In comparison, his own choir was thin and unsatisfying, apt to be ragged around the edges and too free with tempo.

The only saving grace was the knowledge that he, as a soloist, was better than their boy. But to be seen by all these people and musicians performing in this inferior choir would not be pleasurable in the least.

Dr Cross was not to be blamed, he told himself, not wanting to think ill of the man who had treated him so kindly. Cloisterham was bound to be more barren soil than London. Why, London must contain heaps of wonderful singing boys and men. Cloisterham had to take what it could get.

All the same, he felt like weeping. He had never heard their like and, indeed, he was a little heartened when the next choir, from Southwark, could not live up to its predecessor.

He discharged his soloist responsibilities as well as he had hoped to, and resigned himself and his choir to the lowest third of the performers that day. Westminster Abbey and Canterbury were close in quality to St Paul's, but still no other choir managed to eclipse them.

It was a great relief to stretch cramped limbs and venture back out into the bright June sunshine after the final performance and a long speech from the Dean of St Paul's. The piazza was thick with boys and men in surplices and ruffs, milling and yelling aimlessly until they were herded, choir by choir, towards the chapter house.

"Well done, chaps," said Dr Cross, leading the way. "Cloisterham can hold its head high."

"St Paul's were awfully good," said Jasper, at the head of the line, despite there being some three or four boys still his senior.

"You thought so? I'll introduce you to their precentor if you like. You can give him your personal congratulations."

"All right," said Jasper, thinking that Dr Cross had made the offer in a spirit of slight dudgeon and hadn't meant it.

But he was as good as his word, establishing the choir with sticky buns and lemonade, or sherry for the lay clerks, then taking Jasper over to the St Paul's group. Their precentor was regaling about half a dozen of his tenors and basses with a story that might well have been scurrilous, judging by the pop-eyed expressions of his audience. On sighting Dr Cross, he assumed a milder and more jovial air, greeting the Cloisterham choirmaster as an old friend.

"Marvellous performance, outstanding as ever," said Dr Cross. "Our most talented chorister, young Jasper here, insisted on presenting you with his compliments, didn't you, Jasper?"

"Yes, I thought you were much the best of the choirs," he said, but his enthusiasm was tempered by a sense of unease at the way one of the lay clerks stared at him. Why, the man seemed quite thunderstruck. He flicked his eyes toward him for a closer inspection, which only increased his unease. The man had a certain look about him...

He scarcely heard the St Paul's precentor's words of gratitude for the rushing in his ears. At the final 'thank you' of dismissal, he turned to Dr Cross, ready to depart, but the man had broken free of his group and caught Jasper by the elbow.

"One moment," he said urgently, looking up at Dr Cross. "This is your treble soloist? Might I have leave to compliment him on his performance?"

Dr Cross paused, eyebrows raised.

"Of course," he said, a little uncertainly, before moving away back to the Cloisterham contingent.

Jasper turned to the agitated lay clerk. His hair and his eyes and something about the cast of his expression was so very familiar to him…and yet they had never met, could never have met, before.

"Your name is Jasper? He called you Jasper."

"Yes, that is my name."

"How old are you? Twelve? Thereabouts?"

"I am twelve, yes."

"And when are you thirteen?"

Jasper shook his head, bemused at this line of questioning.

"In October," he said.

"October." This seemed the right answer for the man nodded deeply, as if profound realisation had been attained.

"You…wanted to talk about my singing?" Jasper prompted after a moment or two during which the man did little more than look at him in a misty-eyed manner.

"Yes. You have a fine voice," he said. His own was a curious rasp, as if something obstructed his throat.

"Thank you."

Jasper had an urge to run that could not quite overcome a curious rootedness to the flagstone on which he stood.

"Might I…might I ask…that is, I think you must be related to our own Reverend Canon Jasper, is that so?"

"Yes, they are – or they call themselves – my parents."

"Are they? Do they?"

The man looked wildly round. Following his gaze, Jasper saw the aforementioned couple, their backs turned, talking with some people from the Westminster Abbey group.

"So I have heard. They rarely have anything to do with me."

The man swallowed and looked back.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I have not introduced myself. My name is Lepair – Jean-Antoine Lepair."

"You are French?"

"My parents – they fled to London during the Terror when I was a small child."

"You aren't a Catholic?"

"Huguenot. So, you have the history of my life. But I must ask you…I believe you lost somebody dear to you last year?"

"My sister."

Lepair shut his eyes.

"Your sister," he said, in such a low voice Jasper almost didn't catch it. When he opened them again, he said, "Meg."

"Do you know her? Did you, I mean?"

"Yes, I knew her once, before she left London. Tell me…was her life happy?"

The question surprised Jasper so much that he hardly knew how to answer. A negative – the one he was most inclined to give – might cast the man down, judging by the eager, slightly feverish, look in his eye. But a positive would scarcely be true.

"Sometimes," he said.

"But not all the time?"

"She married a blackguard."

"She married?"

"Yes. And she had a son. Edwin."

"Ah." He turned away and shaded his face with his palm for a moment. "Then all was not lost to her," he said.

Jasper was about to query this strange remark when he was seized by the shoulder and yanked back.

"Come away, now, John," said Mrs Jasper brusquely. "Leave him be, Lepair. Come near him again and you will be looking for another choir, another church."

"He only wished to talk to me," protested Jasper, squirming violently beneath the unwanted contact.

"He is not suitable company for you," she said. "Here are your people. Stay with them."

She deposited him in the midst of his fellow choristers and marched off.

"Another touching mother and child reunion," muttered Jasper, glaring after her.

"She is your mother?" Riddings, a chorister of Jasper's approximate age with whom he was on terms that were, if not quite friendly, adequately cordial, sounded stupefied.

"Do not complain of yours," said Jasper, brushing off his shoulder.

"I should say not. Mine is an angel compared to… Who was that cove you were talking to? From the St Paul's rabble?"

"I'm not entirely sure," said Jasper, watching Lepair, who was eating fruit from the surrounding trestles, back in the bosom of his fellow choir members.

"He looks like you," said Riddings. "Don't you think?"

"Not in the least. I say, you glutton, have you eaten _all_ the bread and jam?" said Jasper, but he knew Riddings was right. Lepair looked an awful lot like him.

He contemplated this in his bed that night. The choir's London visit was a weekend affair, so they had taken rooms in a small hotel near the cathedral, where they were to show themselves once more at a celebratory eucharist sung by all the choirs together the next morning.

His three room-mates had finally stopped swapping coarse jokes and stories just before the nearby clock struck two and Jasper finally had some peace and quiet in which to think.

He would be thirteen in just a few months. If it had not already done so, his voice would break soon afterwards. He could look forward to another year at the choir school at most. What would happen next remained undetermined.

If Captain Drood had his way – and he suspected the Jaspers would go along with whatever he decreed, in their desperation to remain part of Edwin's future – he would be cast out and made to earn his living. Perhaps as an apprentice clerk or something equally egregious. Linney had been dropping hints since Christmas.

Why had he found those hints so much easier to pick up on than the stark, staring obvious truth – or so it seemed now – of his origins? Things that had never made sense now slotted into place, greased by his strange conversation with Lepair. Why had she never told him? If only she had… But would he have understood?

He could not answer the question, so he stifled it in his pillow, surrendering to the rare luxury of tears.

At the service the next morning he was pale and heavy-eyed and he joined in the anthems with little enthusiasm. There was a tightness in his chest and a lump in his throat that caused him, at times, to merely mouth the words. Besides, he knew that some ranks behind him in the massed choirs stood Lepair and he could not but think of that man's eyes, so like his own, fixed upon the back of his head.

In the congregation, the Jaspers were at the forefront, and he trained his own gaze, unwavering and vengeful, upon that gloomy pair.

Jasper Senior gave the sermon. How peculiar it was that he had chosen to extemporise upon the Biblical exhortation to honour one's father and one's mother, Jasper thought. But perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps it was meant for his ears.

The idea enraged him and gave him just that extra lick of fire in the blood he needed to put his plan into practice.

Once the service was ended and the other choristers were trooping into the vestry, he slipped away. Reverend Jasper was talking with his fellow canons, at the tail end of the choir, but his wife sat alone in her otherwise empty pew, waiting for him. She seemed to be filling in the time by staring blankly at her prayer book.

By the time she noticed Jasper sliding in beside her, it was too late to repel him.

"You. What do you want?" she said, putting the book down.

For the first time, Jasper realised that her abrupt and unfriendly manner masked fear. He saw it in her eyes. She expected at every meeting to be unmasked. And now her expectations would be met.

"You've never been very motherly towards me," said Jasper, kicking his toes against the hassock. "I wonder why."

"You've never been very filial," she said tartly.

He shook his head and swallowed. He had to get this right. His future depended upon it.

"Is this our third or fourth meeting?" he asked, trying to keep his tone light and pleasant.

"More than that."

"In twelve years. Nearly thirteen. I am nearly thirteen, you know."

"Yes. Old enough to know the respect due a mother from her son."

"How would I ever know that?" He paused. Too hostile. He tried again. "My voice will break."

"A pity," she said, and he thought perhaps it was the first compliment or kind word, however indirect, he had ever received from her.

"Yes, it's a pity," he pursued. "Because then I will have to leave the choir school."

"And earn your living," she said.

The words fell like weights on his head. His worst fears confirmed.

"That's the pity," he said. "Because even Linney – the headmaster, you know, at school – says I am an apt scholar and should pursue my studies further."

"If Mr Linney wants to pay for you to do so, then he is most welcome."

"I don't think he does," said Jasper. "But he thinks somebody should."

"Your choir school is inexpensive, but another school would be beyond our means."

"No it wouldn't. You aren't poor. Neither is Captain Drood."

She stared.

"Insolent boy. How dare you―"

"I dare," he said, his voice quivering a little but still holding sway over hers, "because I want to go to school here, in London. I want you and that man who calls himself my father but isn't, and Captain Drood if necessary, to pay my fees."

"That…to…" spluttered Mrs Jasper, floored by the reference to her husband.

"Yes. I know you aren't my mother. I know he isn't my father. I know who my real parents are. Or were, in my mother's case. I feel a letter to the Dean of St Paul's might be in order. Did I tell you Mr Linney says I write a very fair hand?"

"I…you…lies! Preposterous lies."

"Then you have nothing to fear, do you? Even if I mention the name of Lepair."

She lunged for him but he slid swiftly aside and made good an escape from the pew.

"A good school," he said, no longer whispering, for there were few left in the church to hear. "Here, in London. I don't mind which."

When he made his late exit into the vestry, the other boys were all ready to leave, the Dean of St Paul's having made various speeches and votes of thanks.

"Jasper, where have you been?" fretted Dr Cross, finding his place in the crocodile. "Our coach will be waiting."

"Family business," he said sullenly.

The Reverend Jasper, standing nearby, turned and frowned. Jasper the younger gave him a dazzling smile.

Just as the group were ready to leave, Lepair strode over and took Jasper's hand.

"Where were you? I sought you out but you were not to be found."

"I had words to say to my mother," he said.

"Your mother," repeated Lepair, almost inaudibly. "Well, please excuse me, but I just wanted to say…I wish you well. You have a great talent and I hope it serves you in the future."

"Better than my fortunes have so far," said Jasper, and Lepair nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing uncomfortably.

"I hope our paths might cross again," he whispered.

"So do I."

"Come, Jasper, everybody is waiting for you _again_." Dr Cross's usually excellent reserves of patience were wearing thin. "You have seen your people. Now we are for Cloisterham."

For Cloisterham. Jasper thought the words in his head, hoping above hope that soon his association with that fair city would be at an end.


	14. Chapter 14

Jasper detached his ruff and passed a hand across his sweat-slick throat. The thing had been too tight for months, but now it mattered no more, for he had worn it for the last time. He put it on top of his neatly folded cassock and surplice and went to stow them all in the robe cupboard, wondering vaguely who would wear them next.

"Some of the chaps weep after singing their last Evensong," said Riddings, catching up with Jasper in the corridor outside. "Aren't you sorry to be leaving?"

"Not much," he said, but he slowed down to accommodate Riddings' shorter stride.

"You're always so inscrutable, Jasper," said Riddings, half-admiring and half-censuring. "There must be some things you'll miss. Such as Yours Truly."

Jasper gave him a side-eyed smirk.

"You're at least tolerable," he said. "But as for missing sitting in that hard wooden choir stall freezing till my toes are numb three times a day – no."

"Plenty of boys would give their eye teeth to come to school here."

"Plenty of boys are idiots." He softened. "I will admit that Dr Cross has been a good teacher and has set me on a future path I hope to tread with honour."

They stopped outside the precentor's office.

"He will miss you," said Riddings. "Bet he's blubbing away in there."

Jasper gave his companion a rare smile. "At least he still has you. You'll get all the solos now."

"That's true. In that case, don't come back." Riddings laughed. "Seriously, though, Jasper, you will write, won't you? I want to know about London life."

"As do I." He knocked on Dr Cross's door. "I must see the doctor before I go. Have good hols, won't you?"

"Of course." Riddings hung around awkwardly, as if trying to decide whether a manly pat on the back or an affectionate hug would be rebuffed. Clearly he thought this a strong possibility for, after a second or two of this dithering, he hurried up the corridor with a wave of farewell as his only gesture.

Dr Cross bade Jasper enter and he opened the door to find his mentor busy at his desk, scratching directions into a new music score.

"Ah, Jasper," he said with a rather sad smile. "Take a seat."

Jasper sat down, a little gingerly, for he had rather outgrown the breeches he wore. The St Paul's Jaspers would be paying for some new clothes this summer, he thought.

"What a beautiful swan song you gave us," said Dr Cross. "Palestrina might have written it with you in mind. I wish you'd stay with us just a little longer…"

"My father wrote to you, I suppose? Telling you I have been enrolled at a school in London?"

"Dr Medford's Academy for Young Gentlemen." He sighed. "Yes. Could it not be postponed until your voice has broken?"

Jasper felt a stab of regret at having to disappoint this man - his only friend, it sometimes seemed, in all the world. But escape from Cloisterham was so close now that another minute in its suffocating embrace seemed unendurable.

"I will be fourteen in the autumn," he pointed out. "It cannot now be long."

"No, no, you are right. And you grow taller by the day."

Jasper looked down at his jacket cuff, his bare wrist shamefully exposed by it.

"Will you recommend a good piano teacher, sir?" he asked. "I had thought of that man you introduced me to at the Hanover Rooms – Mr Rawlings?"

"Yes, yes, Rawlings would be delighted to teach you, I am sure. I will write to him."

Jasper nodded, his mind wandering again to thoughts of his real father, Lepair. Where was he? Why had he not replied to any of his letters, bar the first one?

He would soon be in a position to find out. And then, perhaps, he could take music lessons from him.

"It is heartening to know that you intend to maintain your musical studies," said Dr Cross into the silence. "You must not let them lapse. Remember the parable of the talents."

"Of course, sir," said Jasper.

"Or I shall come to visit you when next I am in London and hold you to account. I trust you might keep in touch?"

"Of course," Jasper repeated, no longer present in the room except in the corporeal aspect, his mind abroad on a fantasy sea of London church bells and salons and coffee houses.

Dr Cross, perhaps seeing this, picked up his quill again and resumed his annotations.

"Well, I won't keep you longer. You have your goodbyes to say. I know one young lady who might miss you almost as much as I will."

Jasper blinked rapidly, wondering whom Dr Cross could mean, before realising that it must be Diana Linney.

"Oh…yes. Thank you, sir. For all you have done for me. I shall write, I promise."

Cross nodded, smiling, as Jasper rose and made his escape.

Once the door had shut, his smile faded and he held his quill suspended in mid-air, pondering his protegé's future. If only he would stay in Cloisterham. He had the feeling that a spirit of Jasper's fragility might not prosper in the teeming cosmopolis.

Jasper checked the clock in the lobby, wishing its hands might make haste towards seven o'clock, when the Buds' carriage was to collect him.

Half an hour yet remained, and he had still not said goodbye to Diana. In truth, he had been avoiding her. Ever since she had learned he was going to London, she had been furious with him.

He decided to ease the passage of time in the music room at the piano. But no sooner had he turned the handle than an avenging angel leapt at him from the room's interior, eyes ablaze.

"Did you really mean to leave without saying goodbye, you beast?" she demanded.

He said nothing, so she consolidated her point by beating her fists against his chest, forcing him to take hold of her wrists before she battered a dent in it.

"Are you trying to kill me?" he demanded.

"Yes," she hissed before turning away to try and hide the tears in her eyes.

"You're worse than your father. Heaven knows he tried his best to beat me into submission. You might succeed where he has failed."

She turned back to him, her face no longer that mask of childish rage but stricken by something like grief.

"I detest him for the way he treats you," she said. "Please don't speak of me in the same breath with him. I thought we were friends."

"We are, Diana. At least, when you leave off breaking my ribs."

"But why must you leave Cloisterham? You could go to the King's Grammar if you can't stay at the choir school."

"We have rehearsed this conversation too many times. I have told you. It is the wish of my family in London." He spoke the false words calmly, looking Diana in the eye throughout.

"You will never come back," she accused.

"I might," he said, adding a mental _not_ to the statement. "Who can tell the future?"

"You will miss Phoebe's wedding."

"I doubt she would have invited me."

"She is having the choir, blockhead, to sing at it. Of course you would be there."

"Phoebe and I are not friends. Your parents are delighted that I am leaving. And you will not miss me, not for long."

She let out a muted shriek and kicked his shin.

"Don't presume to tell me how I shall feel! You had better write to me or I'll…I'll…"

"I will write," he promised, rather startled by the number of promises of correspondence that had been extracted from him in such a short time. He had presumed that he would be entirely unmissed and unregretted within moments of leaving the cathedral precincts.

"Tell me about London. I won't go back down to the crypt again. It won't be the same without you."

"Are you afraid to?" he teased.

"Not in the least. But it is our place. Our special place away from everything dreary and horrible."

He laughed at that, to think that the dark, dusty tomb of the Cloisterham dead held such a romantic fascination for this passionate eleven year old.

"Perhaps we will visit it again one day," he said.

The clop of hooves and creak of wheels from the forecourt outside interrupted their moment of sober contemplation.

"The Buds have sent the carriage early," he said, backing away through the open door. "I must go."

"I hope it overturns and you get all your bones broken in a ditch," Diana called after him. "I hate you, John Jasper."

"Goodbye, Diana."

He picked up the handle end of his trunk and began to lug it across the floor.

And so it ended, more than six years of his life spent in this building and its environs. He watched it shrink from the window of the Buds' carriage, the cathedral spire melting into the heat haze of the July afternoon. A face at the music room window was probably Diana's but he could not tell if it was tearful or serene.

For his own part, he sat back against the buttoned plush and smiled.

At the Bud residence, nobody came to the door to meet him.

He left the footman to carry his trunk upstairs and wandered through the house, soon becoming aware of the reason for his absent welcome.

In the back garden, bunting fluttered from trees and hedges and a dozen or so children screamed and stumbled about, engaged in a game of Blind Man's Buff.

It was Ned's seventh birthday. He had forgotten.

He kept himself concealed behind the French doors, watching the festivities. At a white-painted wrought-iron table, Rosa Bud assisted a maid in the pouring of lemonade into small glasses. She was flushed and hot-looking but none the less angelic for it. When she bent to pick up the jug, he looked at her decolletage, at the way her bodice curved downwards from the frilled hem. It made him feel a little faint. Perhaps he ought to sit down. But on the whole he preferred to watch Rosa, so he tried to steel himself.

Her husband ran among the children, propelling the blindfolded Edwin this way and that in an attempt to draw the game out for longer. Edwin was complaining, rather loudly, about not being left alone to work things out for himself.

His voice was high and imperious and Jasper felt a flare of dislike. It was unlucky that he would have to spend the summer in the child's company, his father being detained in Egypt by urgent mining business and thus unable to take his usual summer holiday with his young son. They were all marooned at the Buds' until September, when Jasper would leave for his new school and Edwin would take a late seaside vacation with Captain Drood.

"Who are you?"

The voice was that of a child, perhaps one of the party guests. Without urgency, Jasper turned to scan the room for his interlocutor. She stood in the doorway, her face sticky and crumbed with jammy cake. There was no mistaking this little girl's antecedents, although her expression was rather more belligerent than one might expect from close knowledge of her mother's temperament.

"You don't remember me, I suppose," he said.

"No. Are you a robber?"

"Of course not. I am Ned's uncle."

"Who is Ned?"

He was thrown off course by her confusion, but she was only four years old and perhaps the heat and noise of the party had taken its toll.

"You know Ned," he said gently. "He lives here with you."

"Oh, you mean Eddy?"

"Eddy, Ned. Edwin Drood."

"You are his uncle?" She sounded doubtful, taking a step or two nearer. "You are only a boy. A big boy, but not a man."

"I am old enough. I know you. You are Rosa."

She looked appalled to be unmasked thus by this comparative stranger.

"How do you know me?" she demanded.

"I sang at your christening."

"Did you?"

"You won't recall." He smirked. "You were a baby. Well, you still are."

"I am _not_ a baby," she asserted, stamping her foot. "I am four years old."

"Rosy!" Mr Bud appeared on the threshold of the French window, holding out his hands to his daughter. "And – who is this – oh! Jack. We were expecting you. Do come out and have some lemonade, won't you. Has Robbins seen to your baggage?"

Jasper followed Bud and Rosy out into the back garden.

"Look, Eddy, who has come to visit you. None other than your uncle Jack."

Edwin could not be said to look impressed. He barely paused from the mock fight he was engaged in with another boy on the grass.

"Have you brought me a present?" he asked.

"Eddy." Rosa the elder's tone was remonstrative, but he was oblivious, shrieking as his wrestling partner managed to overturn him and lay him flat on the lawn.

"I'm afraid I did not realise it was your birthday," said Jasper, taking a glass of lemonade from the lovely Rosa and giving her a smile of gratitude.

"What sort of uncle are you?" A disgruntled Edwin stood and brushed himself off. "Is there any more trifle, Aunty Rosa?"

"It is still on the dining room table. You may help yourself to some. Sorry," she said, turning to Jasper as the boy raced towards the house. "He is in very high spirits today. I'm afraid he has forgotten his manners."

"I am surprised at myself, forgetting the date, for I recall the night of his birth so well."

"Do you?" Her smile became sympathetic, tender even, and he revelled in it, wanting to draw it out and feel its beneficent sweetness upon him forever.

"I thought Meg would not survive it."

"Poor dear Meg. I miss her so. I am sure you miss her even more."

"Does _he_?"

"Eddy? Why, of course, he does."

"Does he speak of her?"

"No, but I would not expect him to. The young mind adjusts to loss so much more quickly. She is a treasured memory, but I do not think he suffers over much. At least, I hope he does not. I try my best to keep him happy."

"He is so very lucky to have you." Jasper caught himself, appalled by the excess of emotion that threatened to spill from his voice.

Her smile wavered a little and she looked momentarily anxious.

"It is very kind of you to say so," she said at length.

"I mean…in the absence of his father…who remains in Egypt…as I believe." He managed to catch his breath and calm the heaving of his chest.

"Yes, Captain Drood will return in September and take Eddy off for some weeks by the sea. I hope you'll agree, though, that there are worse places to spend the summer than here."

"Much worse."

"I was surprised, Jack, to hear that you were going to school in London," said Rosa after a delicate pause.

"Were you?"

"I think it was always Meg's hope that you would be educated as a gentleman but, to my mind, her idea was that you might stay in Cloisterham."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"We spoke on the subject more than once."

He levelled an intense gaze on the object of his infatuation.

"You discussed me?"

"Jack, do not look so horrified. It is natural that your sister might talk with her bosom companion about all the minutiae of her life. The education of her own brother is a near concern of hers, would you not say?"

"No, you misunderstand me. I do not reproach her for it."

_But I wish I could have heard these conversations. Heard my name fall from your lips, my welfare the focus of your attention._

"Good, because she does not deserve it."

"You believe that she was a good person."

"Jack, what an odd thing to say. Of course I do."

"A good sister."

"An excellent sister."

"Why did she want me to abide here in Cloisterham?"

"I suppose she intended that you should always be close enough for her to visit. She wished very much for you to be involved with your nephew's day to day life and care."

"Did she? I suppose that is not…surprising. Did she mention her parents…our parents…a good deal?"

"I believe, though perhaps I should not say, that there was some form of, of, well, of rift between them. They dote on Eddy, of course. But now you will re-establish your connexion, when you go to live in London. I hope they mean to compensate you for their many years of neglect."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Jasper vaguely. His mind and heart were too full to consider the frozen natures of his grandparents. Meg had wished for him to stay in Cloisterham, to be close to her and to Edwin. For, of course, she knew their true connexion. Not that of uncle and nephew, but of half brothers.

Captain Drood's monstrous behaviour had taken on a different cast. He had guessed her secret and knew Jasper to be her illegitimate son. His antipathy towards him was hardly astonishing in the light of such a discovery – but he was still unable to forgive it.

He owed it now, to her memory, to remain a presence in Edwin's life. He would come back from London for the school holidays, to lay flowers on her grave and call upon her son. And if he could get a glimpse or two of the angelic Rosa Bud into the bargain, well, such a chance was not to be passed up.


	15. Chapter 15

"Here."

"Boxing gloves?" Jasper turned the items over in his hands and frowned at his companion.

"Nothing surpasses the noble art for developing strength in the upper arm," insisted Septimus Crisparkle.

"I have a great deal of strength in my upper arm, as it happens, Crisparkle. Three hours a day playing the piano is probably just as good as any amount of sparring. Perhaps you'd care to try it."

Crisparkle pondered this.

"In that case, I daresay you'd be a worthy opponent in an arm wrestle, Jasper. Shall we put the theory to the test?"

Septimus brought out the card table from its nest and drew up two chairs.

Jasper, watching his athletic form at work, felt that his new friend truly embodied the phrase 'muscular Christianity'. At twenty four, Crisparkle was newly down from Cambridge and awaiting the beginnings, in September, of a curacy in some village somewhere along the banks of the Thames.

His father having recently attained to the position of minor canon at Cloisterham cathedral, Septimus and his parents now occupied a large and airy cottage in the Close. When Jasper had written to the Buds enquiring about a place to stay for the summer vacation, Mrs Crisparkle had readily offered her hospitality, remembering, perhaps, the shivering six-year-old who had stood on her threshold on the day of aunt Hetty's death.

The presence of her son, Septimus, was a great bonus in Jasper's mind, for he had taken the pale fourteen-year-old under his wing and seemed intent on 'drawing him out', 'building him up' and generally making a project of him, which Jasper found rather touching. At least it passed the otherwise idle hours.

"Now then. Into position." Crisparkle clapped his hands, sat at the table and prepared himself for battle.

It seemed unequal, to say the least – the well-made young gentleman of means versus Jasper, all angles and elbows and ten years his junior – but the battle was not entirely one-sided and Crisparkle had to sweat before he achieved his victory.

"There might be something in what you say," he conceded. "Your wrists in particular are powerful for a boy of your age and size. And I think your fingers may have bruised me."

He inspected his hand with rueful visage.

"Gracious heavens, boys," exclaimed Mrs Crisparkle, coming into the room and making it immediately ten times genteeler by dint of her presence, no longer the masculine sporting den it had, however briefly, become. "This is not a boxing ring. Kindly take your gloves into the yard if you must throw each other about."

"Sorry, mother," said Septimus, leaping to his feet and setting the room to rights. "Jasper was just demonstrating his unusual strength of wrist. I am determined that he shall return to school in September able to defend himself against the worst of those fellows who torment him so."

"Oh dear, I wish you would not encourage him to fight fire with fire," fretted Mrs Crisparkle. "Does not the bible exhort us to turn the other cheek?"

"Jasper has run out of cheeks to turn," said Crisparkle. "Mother, in your gentleness and goodness you cannot imagine what schoolboys must sometimes suffer. I'm afraid we males can sometimes show ourselves no better than savages. In my experience, one good manly punch can save many years of misery."

"I can only hope you will not be recommending this to your parishioners!"

"No, of course not, mother. But boys' schools are a world apart, subject to quite different rules than govern the rest of humanity."

Jasper felt the truth of this and nodded.

Dr Medford's School For Young Gentlemen could more accurately be called Dr Medford's Pen For Young Swine. When Jasper had started there last year, he had been expecting the predictable ragging based on his mop of dark hair and his musical talent. His voice had not then broken and he had quickly earned the nickname 'Malibran'. Falsetto shrieking accompanied his every appearance into the schoolroom or on to the playing fields. It was tedious, but formulaic. Nothing to consider especially malicious.

The older boys soon took notice of him, though, when his mathematical achievements threatened to eclipse their own. A campaign of systematic tormenting was inaugurated, causing all except the least susceptible boys to turn away from him and join the cause. Apple pie beds, ink spilled over his copy, sly pinches at all times of the day, these were his daily portion – all insignificant in themselves but, taken over time, they grew to become scarcely tolerable. Jasper never expected to be a popular boy – he had resigned himself long ago to being the type people simply took against – but this was beyond his reasonable imaginings.

He had spent most of the last term barricaded in the music room. The masters would not listen to 'tattling', nor did they want to spend more time than necessary with their charges. Jasper now had only one friend in the whole school – and it seemed likely that even he would be expelled before too long, as his attitude to learning, and to Dr Medford's many rules, was distinctly cavalier. Still, Rutlish represented the only dim star on his school horizon, and he clung to their casual friendship as to a liferaft in a turbulent sea.

"I have offered to write to Dr Medford," Mrs Crisparkle reminded them.

"Pray," blurted Jasper, his voice cracking a little, as it was wont to do lately – one moment sandpaper-harsh and gruff, the next squeaky. "Pray do not. It will be another black mark against my name. And it's more than likely that Dr Medford will pay no heed at any rate. He cannot stop what he never sees. And the fellows are devilish careful about getting caught."

"But surely something can be done," she lamented.

"That is why," said Crisparkle patiently, "I am giving Jasper the means to defend himself."

Mrs Crisparkle shook her head until her bonnet strings quivered.

"If only you had stayed in Cloisterham, Johnny. You have people here who care for you. Who cares for you in London?"

"I like living in London," he said stubbornly. "Truly I do."

He told no lie, even if London had not quite been as accommodating and genial in its welcome as his eager young heart had expected.

On the minus side, he boarded at Dr Medford's with as blockheaded a gaggle of young wastrels as ever took a pinch of snuff. His dreams of sharing a house with poets and scholars had been only that – a fantasy.

London was dirtier than he remembered from that erstwhile visit to St Pauls and, as he was much more fastidious of his attire now than he had been as a small boy, this was a constant irritation to him.

But the real disappointment of his new place of residence was the mysterious absence of Jean-Antoine Lepair. Despite the lack of reply to all his letters, he felt sure that his father was simply exercising discretion and would be delighted to hear that he was in London and ready to renew their acquaintance. As soon as the Michaelmas half-holiday had come, Jasper had made straight for St Paul's and hidden himself behind a pillar, watching their choir practice. He had been so entranced by their heavenly melodies that it had taken him some time to realise that the man he sought was not there.

Presuming him to be ill, he had gone back to school and written him another letter, which he addressed to M. Lepair courtesy of the cathedral chapter.

When no reply was forthcoming, he took another trip to the cathedral at the October half term. It was his fourteenth birthday and, although he could not expect Lepair to know the exact date of his son's birth, he must have always known it to be around this time of year, so Jasper had high hopes that he might be treated to some tea in one of the better inns of Ludgate.

Again, Lepair was absent from the choir stalls, his place occupied by an unfamiliar man.

At the end of the rehearsal, Jasper begged a word with the precentor.

"Yes, boy?" he said, frowning. "You are a little old to join our choristers, I think."

"I know that, sir. I am looking for one of your lay clerks. His name is Lepair."

The precentor paused and looked around, as if making sure they could not be overheard.

"Lepair? What do you want with him?"

"I…we have a connection. A distant family connection. I merely wish to look him up." Jasper's heart pounded as he fought a horrible, but irrational, fear that he might be recognised as the 'son' of Reverend Jasper. After all, this man and he had seen each other only once, on a busy and crowded occasion. Surely he could not be expected to remember it.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. Mr Lepair has left the choir."

"Left? But…do you know where he has gone?"

"Nobody has the slightest idea. It was all rather sudden, not two months since."

Two months. That would coincide with Jasper's arrival in London.

He was still speechless with dismay when a gruff voice behind them set him at sixes and sevens.

"What are you doing here?"

Reverend Jasper was not able to keep the hostility from his voice.

"Do you know where he is?" blurted Jasper, desperate for an answer and certain in his mind that his detested forebears were to blame.

"Is this boy troubling you?" Reverend Jasper did not wait for the precentor's reply but took his grandson firmly by the shoulders and marched him back down to the west door. The effort of it unleashed a volley of chesty coughs once they stood on the piazza and Jasper waited politely for the reverend to recover himself before demanding once more to know the whereabouts of Lepair.

"If I knew I would not tell you," said the older Jasper, then he pushed the boy backwards, preventing any verbal response to this. "Listen to me, you young cur. One of the conditions of your expensive education is that neither I nor my wife have to look upon you. If you want the arrangement to continue, I'd advise you to make yourself scarce."

"I will speak to the Dean."

The Reverend coughed again. "Do as you will," he wheezed. "I am not long for this world anyway. The good Lord is preparing me for my day of judgement."

"Don't you fear that day?" muttered Jasper. "After the way you have treated Meg and me?"

"I have done my duty and I have maintained my own strict standards of decency. My conscience is clear."

"Yet you pay my school fees."

"Go."

Jasper ran, another hideous volley of racking coughs accompanying his flight.

He leant against the wall of Dr Medford's school, fighting for breath, thinking of his real father's disappearance and his false father's harsh words. It seemed impossible that Reverend Jasper was not implicated. But what could have happened?

The Reverend Jasper died three months later, and he was not invited to the funeral. Any secret he might have had concerning Lepair had gone with him.

Strangely, although he had expected to have to leave school as a result of the bereavement and subsequent withdrawal of funds, Mrs Jasper managed to persuade Drood to stump up the remainder of the costs her widow's pension would not cover and he was able to remain at Dr Medford's.

In these respects, London had failed him, but in others it had not. For a musician it was a treasure trove. Whenever the opportunity arose, Jasper discovered a morning concert or a piano recital to attend. He even enjoyed the street music – at first. Dr Medford, delighted to have a possessor of prodigious musical talent amongst his ranks of philistines in short coats, showed Jasper off to whichever guests graced his drawing room. All prospective parents would be treated to a rendition of a Field nocturne or a Clementi sonata. He felt that he was coming closer to to the position of being able to command some patronage from a wealthy music lover, perhaps the parent of one of his fellow scholars, and he felt optimistic about his future career – for he had chosen already. Music would be his life; it was simple and obvious.

London would be his home. It was where he felt at ease. The gregarious, vivacious city was a perfect foil for his introversion, providing endless opportunities to imbibe its riotous spirit. Only here could he be himself, his past and his background unknown, every avenue open for exploration.

Some of those avenues were a little murky, especially those where the painted women congregated. He could not help but stare, fascinated by their apparent gaiety when these were the most degraded of creatures. Should they not be wearing sackcloth and ashes and weeping for their lost virtue?

Instead they seemed to relish their sinfulness and bruit it abroad. Some of them had even made approaches to him. "Lovely 'air you've got, young master. 'Ave you got any on yer chest?"

He hurried away, sickened, or so he thought. Not so sickened when he returned to the memory in the darkness of the dormitory and imagined himself showing that whore what was what.

Then he felt hideously guilty and turned to the poor sketch he had tried to make of Rosa Bud. Poor, for he had no talent for art whatsoever, but passionate in its rendering. This was the kind of woman for him, a pure and spotless rose. Even if he could never have her, he vowed to remain constant in his soul.

The only advantage of this summer spent in Cloisterham were the glimpses he got of her face in the congregation at cathedral service on Sunday.

The Buds and the Droods shared a pew, so he was loth to approach her but worshipped from afar and treasured the little crumbs of attention she sometimes gave him in the form of a smile or a glance.

Crisparkle had caught him this morning frowning over an attempt to write a love poem in French. It was this, rather than concern for his travails at school, that had made him so keen to introduce Jasper to boxing. The noble art would soon put any thoughts of too-early and inappropriate romance from the boy's head. So Jasper assumed his motives to be, and he appreciated that they were well-meant. But they were doomed.

He chose nonetheless to indulge Crisparkle because the sensation of being cared for and even liked by a member of his own sex was so novel to him.

All the same, he had no particular wish to spar with Crisparkle and hoped his mother might prove an ally.

Turning to her, smiling at her sceptical frown against his declaration of intent to remain and be happy in London, he said, "You do not believe me."

"London is such a dreadfully big place," she said. "And you are so dreadfully young and alone."

"I am not alone, ma'am. I am surrounded by more people than you can imagine."

"But they are not your friends. You poor dear, could you not attend the Grammar School here? We would happily provide board and lodging."

"You are very kind, but I cannot disappoint Dr Medford. He relies on me to provide musical entertainment to his guests."

Mrs Crisparkle pursed her lips, but Septimus spoke to her in his most pacifying manner.

"A young man of Jasper's talents does not want to be hidden away in our sleepy little town, mother. He is better where he is, I am sure. Now, about these gloves…"

"I feel the need for fresh air," said Jasper. "Perhaps a walk to the river might be preferable."

"Oh, well, of course, if you like. Come, I have a stout walking stick I can lend you."

Crossing the Close, Jasper and Crisparkle could not but pass a couple approaching in the other direction.

Jasper recognised Phoebe Linney, but was it possible that the almost bald, red-faced gentleman upon whose arm she walked was her husband? Why, he looked fifty at least, and Phoebe, five years Jasper's senior, could be no more than nineteen. Diana had never mentioned this in her breathless, written-and-posted-in-secret letters to him. Indeed, she never mentioned her sister at all.

He hoped they might pass by with a mere tip of their hats, but Crisparkle knew the fellow and insisted on stopping and hailing him.

"Reverend Woolnough, Mrs Woolnough, good morning."

"It is a very fine morning, Mr Crisparkle."

"May I introduce you to a young friend who is staying with us for the summer? This is ―"

"Oh, I know Jasper already," said Phoebe with offhand rudeness.

"Phoebe, my dear," remonstrated Reverend Woolnough, but she tossed her head and lifted her nose into the air in reply.

"You were Miss Linney at the time," said Jasper flatly, then, presuming that some polite but insincere enquiry was expected of him, "How are your parents?"

"They are well. They are spending the month of August by the sea with Diana. They will not be back before September." She said this with a kind of satisfaction, as if she knew the tidings would disappoint Jasper – but as he had known beforehand, from Diana's own hand, he felt nothing of the sort.

"How is Diana?" he asked.

"She does not miss you, if that's what you want to know."

"Phoebe!" exclaimed her husband once more, then apologetically, "I am afraid my wife is a little out of sorts. This heat, you know."

Crisparkle merely nodded affably and made his own excuses to draw Jasper away from the uncomfortable exchange.

"I had forgotten," he said with a nervous chuckle, "that Mrs Woolnough's father was headmaster at the choir school. You must have seen a great deal of her."

"No, very little, for she loathes me like poison."

"Well." Even Crisparkle was at a loss for the right brand of oil to pour upon these troubled waters. "I am sure…the river, you said? Then we must take a right turn here."

And to the river they walked.


	16. Chapter 16

Jasper coughed so hard he feared for his lungs, the harsh tarry smoke catching in his throat and seeming to cling there.

"Steady on, old fellow." Rutlish peered around the corner of the gardener's shed, scanning for unwelcome company. "You'll have an usher out here."

But the other boys were involved enough in their ragged and periodically violent game of football to maintain the usher's anxious attention, and Jasper and his companion remained safe from scrutiny.

"How can you smoke this stuff?" gasped Jasper, handing the cheroot back to his friend. "I can barely breathe."

"If you want to be a gentleman, Jasper, you need to learn how to smoke. There's no way around it." Rutlish wagged a languid finger and took a long drag of the cigar.

"Are you sure you're the authority on gentlemanly conduct that you say you are?" asked Jasper, his mouth still dry and sour. "So far it seems to consist of smoking and shirking."

"Precisely, m'boy, precisely," drawled Rutlish. "But if you want to go and join those buffoons on the field in kicking each other's shins to no purpose, please be my guest."

"No thanks," said Jasper, who was no lover of team sports, being the general recipient of most of the shin kicks on offer.

"These blockheads don't understand the finer things," said Rutlish, keeping his cheroot to himself now. "They think being a gentleman is about manners and shaking hands and all that. One would think there was no fun at all in it. What about the card parties and the women? Why doesn't the governor ever mention those? A chap could understand the draw of it then."

"Where do women come into it?" asked Jasper, genuinely curious. "I thought a gentleman was always to show civility and respect to any member of the sex?"

"Any _well-born_ member of the sex," said Rutlish with a wink. "Of course one doesn't want to incur the wrath of a wealthy girl's pater. I'm talking about pretty young women without pedigree. You know I said I had a tale to tell you about a girl I met in the holidays? Well, listen to this…"

Jasper gritted his teeth and looked around him, unconsciously seeking escape. If there was one thing about Rutlish he found uncongenial it was the relish he took in speaking coarsely about women. Jasper, who, at fifteen, still worshipped at the shrine of Rosa Bud, found it uncomfortable to hear these baldly biological ramblings, wanting them to be inapplicable to his goddess.

This holy adulation was at constant odds with his growing feelings of inchoate physical desire, which he baulked from directing towards the fair Rosa. He was unworthy of her. He should not look at the young scullery maid in that manner, should not imagine his hands on that soft swelling chest, or try to picture what lay within her petticoats. He was low and vile and base.

He tried to escape into music, dismissing the rapacious monster lurking at the edges of his awareness, but the effect was only to make the music itself torment him, reminding him of his repressed condition.

It was all useless, anyway. He could never have Rosa and he wanted no other.

Before Rutlish could embark on his scurrilous anecdote, a voice called from the far end of the lawn, "Hi, has anybody seen Malibran?"

The game broke up noisily and Jasper, ears pricked, looked around the side of the shed. Was he in some sort of trouble?

The voice, revealing itself to be one of the prefects as he came out of the French doors at the back of the building asked again.

"Isn't Jasper with you? He's nowhere to be found."

The presiding usher scratched his head.

"He _was _here…"

"Only there's a letter for him, that's all."

Jasper hid himself from view again. A letter. Nothing important.

"A black bordered affair."

He inhaled sharply and felt sweat prickle his skin. Rutlish nudged him.

"Better go and see what's what, old chap," he said, in as sympathetic a tone as Rutlish ever managed.

Jasper showed himself.

"I am here," he called, running across the lawn on legs that felt too flexible. "Where is the letter?"

"Ah, Jasper," said the prefect. "Best come in. Matron's in the study – she has the letter for you."

The study was a long way away along corridors that were airless.

"Who is it from?" he asked anxiously. "Where is it from? From Cloisterham, I suppose?"

"Haven't the foggiest, old fellow," said the prefect, who would normally have said something sharper. When they were kind to you, Jasper thought, that was when you knew things were bad.

The prefect knocked on the study door and opened it.

"I've found him, Matron."

"Thank you, Perse. Come in, Jasper, and sit down."

This was the ogress who turned all but the nearly-dead away from her sanatorium door. She was asking him to sit down. It was all wrong.

"Who is dead?" he blurted, sitting on the opposite side of the hearth. It remained unlit, for the late September day was not cold; indeed, the country had been rejoicing in unusual warmth for the time of year.

"The letter is addressed to you, Jasper," said the matron gently. "Nobody has read it. Here."

She handed it over.

Snatching it, he recognised the neat, tiny hand of Mrs Crisparkle. Was it her husband? Septimus? Somebody at the cathedral? Dr Cross?

He ripped open the seal and saw the lines of script blur in front of him. Before he could look for the opening salutation, a name leapt at him from amidst the carefully composed letters, and he cried out.

"No, it cannot be," he said, staring wildly at the matron. "It is a mistake. This cannot be. It cannot."

How many times he repeated this blunt assertion he could not have said. In all probability he was still saying it as his legs gave way and he slid to the floor, relinquishing consciousness.

If only it did not have to return like a swooping bird of prey, plucking him up in its beak and making him think and bear the unthinkable and unbearable.

His head still spinning, he awoke a few minutes later to find himself cradled in the arms of the aghast-looking matron, who dabbed at his forehead with a sal volatile soaked handkerchief.

"Poor boy," she said. "Is it your mother? But surely they would have sent somebody in person…rather than a letter…"

"I have no mother," he said, a cry of agony that caused the matron to gather up her handkerchief and gasp in outrage.

"Wickedness! Why, she it is who pays your fees from her pension. Oh dear, this shock has affected your brain, I fear."

Jasper managed to get on to his knees and stayed there for a moment or two, breathing heavily and trying to still the swimming in his head.

"Got to lie down," he panted. "Got to…go."

He staggered to his feet, flapping the matron away from him.

"Jasper, stay, tell me what troubles you. It will help you to speak of it," she insisted, but he made an unsteady path to the door and then ran to his bed in the eaves of the house and lay there for the rest of the afternoon, covers pulled over his head.

People came and went. Days passed. He neither moved nor spoke, nor ate, nor drank. Different approaches were taken by his visitors – gentleness, sternness, sympathy, bluster. None made a whit of difference.

Sometimes he thought of raising his head or moving a hand, but it all seemed futile, not to mention requiring more energy than he possessed, which was none.

On the third day, a doctor came and pronounced Jasper to be suffering from nervous exhaustion with a danger of brain fever if he could not be persuaded to take something to eat and drink. He suggested that the remainder of the term be spent at home.

Jasper thought of telling the man that he had no home, but that would mean using his voice, and the task seemed insurmountable.

Letters must have been written, for two days later the doctor returned with Medford, who had in his hand a correspondence from Captain Drood.

"This man, Drood, is the boy's brother-in-law and benefactor," said Dr Medford to the medical man. "He suggests his removal to an asylum until his condition is brought under control. A dreadful shame, though. The boy possesses wit and ability. I should be very sorry to see such a fate befall him. But if we have done all we can…"

Jasper stiffened beneath his sheets, the unaccustomed employment of his muscles feeling foreign and painful. An asylum? It would suit Drood so perfectly to have him shut away with the madmen. He curled his fingers into fists and dragged up every iota of resolve he possessed in order to speak.

"No. I shan't go."

"What's that, boy?" Dr Medford drew back the covers and squinted down through half-moon pince-nez at his promising pupil. "Did you speak?"

Jasper, hiding his face behind crossed arms, repeated, "I shan't go. I am not mad."

"Then speak to us," said the doctor. "Come out of this dreadful funk. You have your youth and your strength, and your master here says that you are a bright fellow. Why would you waste that on moping away here?"

"I don't care what happens to me," said Jasper. "Death would be welcome. But I will not oblige Drood by going into a madhouse."

"Sit up, do," snapped Dr Medford, his limited patience receding with each mournful pronouncement. "And show us your face like a man."

Jasper made a slight move, as if to obey, but he had not the strength. The doctor, understanding this, arranged his pillows and helped him to a sitting position.

"Dr Medford, I wonder if you would call down to the kitchen for some broth," he said, pouring a glass of water from the jug on the bedside table and offering it to Jasper, whose lips were cracked from dehydration.

Dr Medford bustled off, muttering under his breath.

The doctor drew up a chair and gave Jasper a conspiratorial smile.

"Well, then, now that we have seen the governor off, what do you say to a little exchange of confidences? I can see that you are unwell, but your illness is of the mind. My prescription to you would be a good game of football with your fellows, plenty of hard work, fresh air and exercise. Not too much study, for I think that can exacerbate a nervous disposition, but take up as many good, hale, hearty, manly pursuits as you are able and you will soon find yourself as cheery as a cricket."

Jasper was too sunk in contempt of this prescription to speak for a while.

"None of that will bring her back," he said dully. "And besides, I loathe sports."

"Eh? What? Are you a boy? You are unnatural, sir. I will certainly recommend to Dr Medford that he personally oversees your programme of convalescence. It is clear that you have been allowing yourself too much time to dwell on aberrant thoughts and ideas. Fresh air, my boy! Exercise! Or I will have no choice but to carry out Captain Drood's wishes."

Jasper drank from the cup, the first drop of cold water on his parched throat giving something like pleasure, but it was a sensation that quickly dulled, and he returned to his pit of desolation before the swallowing was done.

"You can't put a sane person in an asylum," he said sullenly.

"I am a doctor and I will do what is best for my patient," he said. "In your case, if you continue to exhibit this resistance to treatment, you shall find your obstinacy rewarded with a straight-waistcoat and an escorted carriage ride to Bethlem." He paused and watched Jasper's face, but the boy would not meet his gaze.

"Bedlam," he muttered. "I sometimes think I am the only one sane in this world."

"As do your fellow patients, young man."

"I shall not be of their number."

"Do I begin to hear reason?"

"Drood won't have his way. If you will give me that broth, I will try to eat a little."

The doctor took the bowl from the kitchenmaid, who had appeared with the requisite refreshment.

Jasper forced down four spoonfuls then put it aside.

"You see," he said. "I am perfectly well. There is no need for you to stay."

The doctor smiled and bowed and said something about coming back to make sure in a day or so.

Determined as Jasper now was to prove himself fit, the toll of his unsleeping, uneating days could not be denied. On his first day back in the schoolroom he collapsed at his desk and was returned to the sanatorium in a high and delirious fever.

Lying in his narrow bed, he fell into a broad waterfall of vivid waking dreams, seeing her face, hearing her voice. She lived still and she waited for him, standing on the banks of a glistening river, calling his name.

"I'm not ready for you," she said, laughing that bell-like laugh he had heard so often in his fantasies. "But your time will come, John Jasper. Your time will come."

He tried to swim to her but the water closed over him and he struggled for breath. The water was hot, a boiling surge, and then it was icy, but she always stood on the other bank, always waiting, faithful, reposing her trust in him.

Sometimes somebody was with her – he thought it was Meg. He asked her how she was but she never answered him. He wanted to ask her so many things but the words would not come. The only one that did was 'why?' and he repeated it, until he was hoarse, but to no avail. After all, she was not there.

She was not there, but he could reach for Rosa's hand at last. He was so close to her and her hand was stretched towards him. He would take it, take her up in his arms, carry her into the inner depths of paradise.

"Come on, Jasper, come on." He put his hand in hers.

The voice was not right, it was not Rosa's voice.

"Come on, Jasper. Wake up. Wake up."

Another face swam in his vision, a face a little like hers but more masculinely defined.

He coughed and tried to sit up.

"Rutlish."

"Jasper! He is risen!"

"Did I die?"

"Damn close thing, old fellow, damn close. Doctors thought you were a goner weeks ago."

His head fell back on the pillow.

"Why must I live?" he said weakly.

"I'll get matron."

After endless fuss and broth and takings of temperature and medicine, Jasper and Rutlish were alone together again.

"You're out of danger, they say," remarked his friend.

Jasper stared gloomily into the middle distance.

"I was so close to her," he said.

"Yes," said Rutlish, drawing closer with a curious and conspiratorial gleam in his eye. "Who is she, Jasper? I heard you raving about her – matron thought you must be conducting a secret love affair with one of the town girls. She was all for having you kicked out, if you didn't, you know, die. But I know you better and I spoke up on your behalf. 'Jasper?' I said. 'Why, Jasper is as innocent as one of Little Bo Peep's ewe lambs. The only girl he has ever looked upon is the portrait of the young Queen Elizabeth in Medford's study. Pure and spotless, he is'."

"Stop it."

"Well, I did! And it's true, ain't it?"

"It was more than a dream. I saw her. She was real."

"Yes, but who? Stop being such a dark horse, Jasper. Who is Rosa?"

He took a draught of water.

"The woman who…in the letter…"

"The one who died?"

"I cannot think of her as dead. She is still with me."

Rutlish smiled nervously. "I say, you're not going to go doolally again, are you? That was awfully tiresome."

"She said my time would come."

Rutlish sat back and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

"If you don't want to tell me…"

"No, it's all right. I'll tell you. She is a friend of my…sister's."

"Your sister is dead, didn't you say?"

"Yes, Meg is dead. Rosa…Rosa is her dearest friend."

"And dear to you also?"

"She gave me my voice."

"What? Jasper, really, I think the doctor ―"

"I spoke my first words to her, at the age of four or five. Before that, I had been mute."

"I say, really? And you've had a pash on her ever since?"

"Do not make light of it."

"I'm sorry. Very sorry. You took her passing very hard."

"I cannot feel in my heart that she is gone. I do not expect you to understand this, but…I did see her. She was as clear and as present as you are now."

"Hallucinations, old chap. Very common with fever."

"I feel that she is with me, even now. I am afraid to disturb her."

"Oh, now, Jasper, you are lightheaded. Take some more soup, do."

He did as his friend recommended, ever mindful of the necessity to stay out of Bethlem, but nothing anybody could say would shake the conviction that Rosa had appeared and spoken to him during his illness.

She had said that his time would come. He could not know what she might mean by that, but if he waited long enough, surely the answer would present itself.

She expected something of him, some duty or earthly assistance. When the time came to render that service, he would be on his guard, and she would never be able to accuse him of forgetting or neglecting his obligation to her. Never.


	17. Chapter 17

The fence was rickety and it swayed as if it might collapse as Jasper swung a tentative leg over its top. Rutlish whispered words of encouragement from the alley below, and the gentle rain which had just started to fall urged him on too.

He clung for a moment before dropping the three feet to the muddy cobbles, Rutlish putting out an arm to prevent him from falling foul of the ever-present slime.

"You see? I told you it was easy."

Jasper inspected his fingernails, frowning. He was fussy about the state of his hands.

"You are quite sure that they will not lock the kitchen door until eleven?"

"Look, old fellow, I've done this three times now. The routine is always the same. Are we to spend the night fretting here or shall we start walking?"

Jasper looked up at the darkening skies and struck his best foot forward.

"What is this place called again?"

"The Lord Boot."

"And it's a penny gaff?"

"The back room is used for theatrical entertainment," said Rutlish, turning to his friend with a wide-mouthed grin. "If you can call it that. Oh, Jasper, you have to see it. I hope they do the Red Barn murder tonight."

Jasper could not quite fathom why his friend considered that taking him to a low street entertainment was the way to help celebrate his seventeenth birthday. However, it was the first time in many years that anybody had thought to mark it, and he was not one for turning away the rare instances of simple kindness that were offered him.

It was a short walk to the back court in Clerkenwell wherein was situated the Lord Boot. Rutlish and Jasper joined a small but lively crowd of jostling patrons, paid their pennies and entered the noisy room.

Jasper was but glancingly acquainted with the London mob but tonight they impressed themselves upon him in their full bawdy glory. Men with blackened stumps for teeth spat tobacco on to the floor and bellowed at the stage, where a boy dressed as a girl in astonishingly thick rouge sang a rude song in a piping falsetto. Rutlish went to get drinks. By the time he returned, Jasper had been propositioned by no fewer than four ample-bosomed women of varying ages and states of inebriety.

"Nobody take your fancy, old boy?" asked Rutlish with a wink. "These girls can be had for a haporth of gin. I say, look behind you."

A ragged boy of about twelve was creeping a bony hand into Jasper's coat pocket. He darted off, his mission curtailed.

"The pox is not one of my great ambitions in life," said Jasper primly.

"No, well, I daresay you are prudent," said Rutlish. "There are good houses near here, though. Fine girls. You're a handsome enough chap, Jasper, they will like you. I will take you to one if you like."

Jasper took a sip of his ale and shook his head.

"You cannot know what you are missing, Jasper. There's a girl I like to call on up by Smithfield – Jenny is her name. The things she can do with her tongue – well, I would say they might make your hair curl but…" Rutlish laughed.

"Women are not objects to be bought and sold," he said sharply. He was thinking of Meg. He often thought of her these days, much more so since Rosa's death. He turned to Rutlish and spoke vehemently. "What of love, Rutlish?"

Rutlish shrugged. "What of it? I am only enjoying my youth while I have it. I know you're one of these poetic, romantic types but they were all the same underneath the flowery language. When they saw a bit of skirt they liked, they chased it. It's the condition of man, Jasper. Why deny it?"

"I prefer to believe that I am a little above the beasts of the field. Perhaps you may call me deluded. My delusions and I will keep each other good company."

"They won't keep your bed warm, though, will they?"

Rutlish began to clap and catcall as the next act was pelted off the stage with a mixture of oyster shells and orange peel.

An out of tune piano at the side of the stage struck up some dramatic chords and the publican ran on to announce the next performance. A roar of approval went up as the name of Jack Sheppard was mentioned.

"Splendid," enthused Rutlish. "Jack Sheppard plays are the very best. I wonder how they will show his miraculous escapes from prison this time?"

But Jasper was not listening. The sound of the piano had directed his musicianly attention towards the instrument, which was a battered and cheap old thing. But then he had noticed the man who played it and come very close to spitting his beer on the sawdust.

"What's up, man? Don't you care for Jack Sheppard plays? You look as if you've had all the blood drained from you." Rutlish followed Jasper's staring gaze to the man at the piano. "Do you know him?"

Jasper swallowed and nodded, still bereft of speech.

It was Jean-Antoine Lepair.

The play stretched on interminably, the irrepressible Sheppard enjoying ever more audacious triumphs over the blockheaded lawmen as he mock-leapt over prop houses, stopping to blow kisses and wave handkerchieves at the handsome ladies of the town. But Jasper saw nor heard a whit of it. He stood with his fingers clenched around the handle of his pint pot, waiting for the final scene.

The landlord called time before the players were ready, forcing them to gallop to the piece's conclusion, gabbling their lines at high speed. Lepair played his musical accompaniment with similar hectic urgency, finally putting his forearms on the keyboard and resting his head upon them.

"Excuse me," said Jasper, breaking away from Rutlish and cutting through the crowd.

"Where you…?" Rutlish had drunk four pint pots and as many brandy chasers and he was in no fit state to pursue Jasper, or remonstrate. "Theresh a lock in," he called. "Barman told me. Come on."

But Jasper was at the piano, fending off staggering admirers.

Lepair still sat in his attitude of weary dejection.

"You," said Jasper brusquely. "Look at me."

He looked up swiftly and Jasper could not but notice, at these closer quarters, how the five years that had passed had altered the man. He was bloated and red-eyed, his cheeks and nose patterned with a fretwork of broken veins.

At first he looked only confused, then recognition drove away the patina of vagueness. Jasper had hoped for some spark of pleasure, but there was none.

"Is it you?" said Lepair.

"You know it is your son."

He looked crushed at that and turned away. "I cannot face you," he muttered. "You know me for what I am. Let me be, please."

"Let you be? How can I? You are my father, my only living blood relative, except…" He shook the image of Ned's fat red cheeks from his mind.

"Then the Jaspers are both dead?"

"Both, yes. Both burning in hell, I hope."

"You are bitter."

"I have cause to be."

"Yes," said Lepair, turning again to his discoloured keyboard. "Yes, you do. Your voice is quite different now. Do you still sing?"

"I am not a member of any choir," said Jasper, "but yes, the boys at school pester me for parlour ballads with quite tedious enthusiasm."

"Follow your voice," said Lepair. "Use it wisely and it may be your fortune. I wish you well. But now you must go."

"Where do you live?"

"My sin has found me out," said Lepair, more stridently now, "and I atone for it now, oh yes, how I atone for it. I have no words of paternal advice for you but these – do not live as I have. Avoid dissolution and mortify your flesh. Mortify it, I say, for if you have inherited my nature, it will lead you to destruction."

"I wrote to you…"

"Heed me, my boy, my son. I have nothing to offer you. I cannot care for you. You remind me only of my vice, of the loathsome creature I am. She was twelve years old. You should hate me."

"You made me."

He was silenced by that assertion, staring at Jasper in wonder.

"If I hate you," Jasper continued, "I must hate my own blood."

"Half of it is Meg's. The good half. I only hope it gives sufficient counterweight in your veins to my own."

"Father, I wish only―"

But the use of the paternal epithet seemed to rouse Lepair to rage.

"What are you doing in this place?" he cried, turning the heads of all those who caroused nearby. "You are following in my footsteps and it cannot be borne. Get away from here. Away. As far away as you can."

"Where shall I find you again?"

"You must not! You shall not find me again. Do not come back here – if you do, then I must lose the only living I can scratch."

Two menacing-looking men, one completely bald, pitched up beside them, the scene having attracted the interest of all who stood within its earshot.

"Is this young shaver giving you grief, Mr Lepair?" asked one. "I'll have him out on his ear if you just say the word."

"Do not lay a hand on me." Jasper's tone was hot enough to take the men aback.

"Well, now, there's no need to be taking that tone with me, son."

"I am not your son. Not _your_ son."

"Go!" Lepair reverted to his former attitude, head buried in arms on the keyboard. The word was muffled but its desperation was not.

"Come on, Pork Chop, let's 'ave him out."

And without further ado, the bald man and his curiously named colleague each took an arm of Jasper's and dragged him bodily across the filthy sawdust floor, ending this inglorious promenade by pitching him through the door and out into the stinking courtyard behind. Such strength did the combined forces of Bald Man and Pork Chop lend their mission that Jasper landed on his knees on the slimy cobbles, looking up to see himself in a place that was more midden than courtyard, rank with rotting vegetables and rife with rats.

A little dazed, he stumbled to his feet and tried to regain access to the back room, but the door was now locked and bolted.

"Lock in," he recalled, realising also that Rutlish had, rather ill-advisedly, joined the late-night revellers. If he wasn't careful, their jaunt would be found out and the game would be up at Dr Medford's.

There was no way to retrieve him now and besides, he was too wounded to pay much attention to anything but his own misery.

Brushing himself off, he commenced the journey back to Dr Medford's, his mind boiling with Lepair and what he had said.

"Conceived in sin," he muttered, trying to make his progress through the warren of alleys as swift and businesslike as he could, to repel the thieves and whores who stood in every shadow.

"Born into misery."

"Cheer up, love. I know some tricks what could put a smile on that handsome face."

"A burden to all. A blight. Unwanted and unloved."

But that wasn't true, he conceded in his heart. Meg had loved him, in her way. But then she had left him, for Drood. How could he blame her for that? What did he offer in the way of attraction to her? He was her millstone; of course she would take the first opportunity to remove him from her neck.

Had she loved Lepair, in her childish way? She must have done. But perhaps… The thought was horrible. It had occurred to him before but he had always managed to dismiss it before it bloomed into full form.

"Conceived in _violence_," he hissed, thumping at the slimy alley wall with his fist as he passed. "Conceived in _fear_."

He walked for miles that night, taking a circuitous route back to the school, walking out the boiling soup of rage and despair until he was so fatigued it had to let him be.

The study bedroom he shared with Rutlish was still empty when he entered, a quarter after three in the morning. Either he was still boozing or he had passed out – most likely the latter.

Jasper lay down on his bed and tried to think about going back to find him, but before the idea was half-formed, he was asleep.

He was woken by a fierce hammering on the door and the shrill cries of one of the youngest boys.

"Jasper! Jasper! You have missed breakfast and the governor wants to see you."

He raised himself on to his elbow, noting that he was still clothed, down to his boots. His pocket watch, when he fumbled it from his waistcoat, read half past nine.

"What is it?" he said, hauling his stiff frame from the bed to the washstand. He splashed his face and checked the mirror. He looked pretty ruffianly but there was nothing to be done about that now. The whiskers were coming along quite nicely; he smoothed them down with damp fingertips, straightened his neckcloth and went to the door.

"What's to do, Jenkins?" he asked the youngster, who capered about his heels like a puppy. "Do you know what Medford wants of me?"

"No, but there's a fearful row downstairs. Rutlish staggered in, steaming drunk, at six in the morning and put his fist through a pane of glass in the breakfast room."

Jasper paused, halfway down the stairs and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Is that why I've been summoned? Did anyone mention my name?"

Jenkins shrugged.

"Dunno. Rutlish is in the san, sleeping it off. Medford's written to his parents. I think he's going to be expelled."

"Oh dear," said Jasper, uneasy at the thought of the same fate befalling him. He was still undecided as to which fictitious account of the night's events he should give Dr Medford when he entered that august gentleman's study.

"Ah, Jasper," said Medford, looking up. Jasper could calculate nothing from the man's expression but the letter he had been reading seemed to be germane. He tried and failed to make out its import from an upside-down perspective before asking the headteacher why he had been called for.

"Sit down, boy," said Medford, and Jasper took a deep breath. Boys who were in trouble were never offered seats.

"I had high hopes of you," continued the pedagogue, raising more alarm to the surface of Jasper's consciousness. _Had?_ "You are one of the brightest young fellows to pass through the doors of my establishment in some years, and of course, your musical gifts have brought us all great pleasure. But I am sorry to say that we must make our farewells, Jasper."

"Make our farewells? Why? If I have transgressed in some way ―" He half-stood, but the teacher motioned him to sit back down.

"No, Jasper, you are not at fault. I am afraid that your erstwhile benefactor, your brother-in-law, finds himself unable to meet our fees. A prosaic end to a promising academic career, I'm afraid, but an all-too-common one."

"He refuses to pay them?"

"He wrote some time ago stating that he intended to withold any further payment from the date of your seventeenth birthday. I wrote back immediately, for I am very loth to lose you. I suggested that we could offer a partial scholarship, to the value of 80% of our expenses, but he refused the idea. I gather that his decision was motivated rather by moral considerations than financial."

"Moral?"

"He thinks you will be better served making your living in the world than lingering in the groves of academe."

"He wants to turn me out of doors?"

"He suggests that you set yourself up as a music teacher."

"How am I to do that? I have not a penny to my name. I cannot afford a night's lodging, never mind a piano."

"I had thought along those very lines, Jasper, and I believe I have come up with a solution."

"Oh?"

"I took the liberty of writing to your former music master at the cathedral school – Dr Cross."

"In Cloisterham? Why?"

"Because he holds you in high regard, Jasper. I have never forgotten the letter of recommendation he sent me before you came here. He asks that you apply to him at the cathedral, where he might be able to find a position for you."

"Back to Cloisterham? It is not what I had in mind…"

"No, I suppose not, but we must make the most of what we are offered when life puts twists and turns in our path, must we not?"

The teacher's tone was gentle, patient. Jasper thought of how it contrasted with that of the detestable Linney. Those times seemed so far distant now…going back to Cloisterham would seem like failure.

"I will find Drood and tell him what I think of him," muttered Jasper.

"That would entail the chartering of an Egyptian-bound vessel," cautioned Medford. "If you cannot afford a night's lodging, you certainly cannot afford that."

Jasper took a moment to compose himself, then rose from his chair.

"Well, I must thank you, sir. My time here was well-spent and I am sensible of how handsomely I have been treated at your hands. I will not forget it."

Medford nodded.

"I will go and pack my trunk. I'm afraid I must prevail upon you for the fare to Cloisterham, for what little I had was spent on drink last night."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I was with Rutlish. He thought only to provide a small celebration in honour of my birthday. I hope and trust you will not be too hard on him."

"Jasper!"

But Jasper had bowed and left the room, intent on leaving the institution he had called home for four years with the minimum of fuss.


	18. Chapter 18

On the first day of November the skies were grey but the clouds held onto their heavy burdens, refraining from dropping them all over the town of Cloisterham which still stood four square on its patch of Kentish ground, unchanged in every single respect Jasper could recall.

Alighting from the omnibus, he went straightaway to the nearby inn and deposited his trunk behind the bar there, then he strode across the street to the nearby Gatehouse Lodge. He knew this to be Dr Cross's place of habitation, but he would not find him there at this time of day, so he passed underneath the archway, taking out his pocket watch – still the model given to him by Meg on the occasion of his joining the choir school – and calculated that the most likely place to locate his former mentor in the hour before Evensong was the cathedral.

The walk from the gatehouse was both pleasantly and unpleasantly familiar. Here was the graveyard, dull and brutal-looking in the fading light, its overgrown grasses bespeaking neglect and decay. Here was the choir school, his alma mater, the place of sorrows. In the schoolroom window, somebody had lit a candle and he pictured the rows of boys, slumped over slates, yawning and numb-toed while Linney presided over all with his cane at hand.

And now, here was the Cathedral Close, with the Crisparkle house in Minor Canon Corner, its floral frontage now dead-leaved and bare about the doors and windows. Above him, the cathedral tower loomed, no less insistent in its majesty than it had been the first time he saw it as a small child.

How could his surroundings be so large and yet seem so small? It was not St Paul's, he supposed. London had altered his sense of perspective beyond repair and he was no longer constituted for a country town.

His constitution was not the point at issue, however. His empty pockets were.

He walked beneath the West Door and saw Dr Cross at the far end of the nave, bent over his lectern, annotating a score.

The man was deep in his work and Jasper was almost at his feet before he came to the choirmaster's notice.

"Heavens," he said, jumping a little, then putting down his pen and smiling. "Jasper. How good to see you. I had been hoping for a visit."

"Dr Medford gave me your message."

"Good, good."

"He suggested I might apply to you for a position here at the cathedral."

"Yes, indeed. I have lately lost one of my lay clerks on the cantoris side – terribly careless of me, I dare say. Tell me, do you still sing?"

"A little. When provoked."

Cross chuckled. "Ah, well, I hope I might offer you some provocation. Would you sing something for me now?"

"Such as?" Jasper cleared his throat, surprised at his job application taking such a practical turn.

"Oh, any of the psalms, I suppose. Whatever comes to mind. Perhaps not a murder ballad or a bawdy catch, given our surroundings."

Jasper smiled. He had forgotten how much he enjoyed Dr Cross's unassuming manner and mild humour.

Dr Cross offered his place at the lectern, which Jasper took, loosening his neckcloth before launching into a setting of the fifty first psalm. The power of his voice surprised Jasper himself, since the vast echoing chamber of the cathedral seemed to lend it a tone Dr Medford's drawing room signally lacked.

The sounds that came from his mouth, taken up on the cold clean air and transformed there into a distillation of rare beauty, seemed to emanate from a place outside of him. The sensation was odd but he shook it off once his psalm was sung through, and the expression on Dr Cross's face reassured him of success.

"Better than I had even hoped," he said. "You will do more than adequately, Jasper, more than adequately. Well, the position is yours, if you will take it."

"Forgive me if I seem ungrateful, but as I recall, the lay clerks were but poorly paid," said Jasper bluntly.

"Yes, well, I do have an additional proposition which will furnish you with free bed and board, not to mention a little extra income you might put towards setting yourself up in life."

"Oh?"

"My missing lay clerk also held the position of junior master at the choir school."

"Oh no," said Jasper, his eyes wide. "I could never…"

"Why not? Dr Medford wrote most warmly of your academic abilities. You are more than equal to teaching a few small boys their multiplication tables, I should think."

"That is not the extent of the duties," he said. "And the lodging would be at the choir school."

"Yes, of course."

"Which is still presided over by ―"

"Mr Linney, yes. Jasper, you are older now. You will be his colleague, not his pupil. Come. Put aside past animosities – I'm sure you are man enough for that, are you not?"

"I don't know."

"It is as good an offer as you are likely to receive this year, Jasper. It need not be permanent. You still play the piano, I take it?"

"Yes, indeed I do."

"You have it in your power to make a good living as a private music tutor, I should imagine. But first, you need to get yourself on your feet. Linney, whatever you might say of him, is willing to offer you that first step towards an independent living. You should take it."

Jasper looked sideways, swallowing. The prospect of once more sharing a roof with Linney was repellent to him, but Dr Cross spoke good sense about its providing a foundation for a more palatable future. If he had free board and lodging, he could save the greater part of his lay clerk's wage. He could advertise for private pupils once he had put aside enough for a room of his own and a piano.

"I don't mean to stay longer than a year or so," he said.

"As you decide," said Dr Cross. "But I hope my choir will be able to keep you."

Jasper smiled non-committally and bowed his head.

"Now, tell me," said Cross, as if all this were done and beyond undoing. "What concerts have you been to since last we met? What are your latest enthusiasms?"

His answer, touching on a great new passion for Berlioz conceived after seeing the Symphonie Fantastique performed in London, and his purchase of Liszt's piano transcription, took them across the Close at a cracking pace. Jasper still could not quite shake the cathedral cold from his body, though. It was as if it had crept back into his bones and meant to stay there, binding him with its sacred ties. A sense of being recaptured after escape sat uneasily in his breast and he could not prevent himself falling back into his boyhood habit of looking for hiding places around and about the precincts.

There was nowhere to hide from Mr Linney, though, who stood in the lobby of the choir school supervising the lining up of the choristers, ready for Evensong.

"Ah, Linney," said Dr Cross, while Jasper tried to prevent his heart from sinking any further, thoroughly depressed by the deadening environs of his unhappy early youth. "You will recall we spoke of the possibility of finding a replacement for Boswell. I have secured him."

"Jasper."

Dr Cross had evidently not discussed the identity of his candidate with the choir school headmaster, for he took off his spectacles and blinked as if needing to convince himself that he saw aright.

"Mr Linney." Jasper nodded, unable to bring himself to offer his hand.

"This is a surprise," Linney managed to say, but Dr Cross had already excused himself from further exchange by taking his place at the head of the crocodile of boys and ordering them to quieten down in preparation for the walk to the cathedral.

All were in a state of suppressed excitement precipitated by the arrival of Jasper, whom certain of the older boys remembered from his days as star soloist. The younger ones merely wished to know who would take over from the pitiable Boswell. Jasper was young, which was promising, but on the other hand, he did not look the type who was as easily played as Boswell, which was not.

Dr Cross led them out of the front door, watched by Jasper and Linney until the smallest boy tripped over the threshold, the victim of his own curiosity in twisting his head to look back at the new junior master.

"Can this be so?" said Linney, not entirely pleasantly. "You are to take the vacant position? I thought you still at school in London."

"Alas," said Jasper, "dire necessity brings me back to Cloisterham."

"Dire necessity," repeated Linney, his eyes narrowed. It seemed to Jasper that he longed to enquire further but courtesy forbade, and Jasper was certainly not inclined to enlighten him.

"How long have you been without your junior master?" he asked instead.

"A matter of weeks. He left us under a cloud, I'm afraid. I might hope you will perform your duties with more alacrity."

"I will do my best, I am sure."

"Yes. You are rather _young_, Jasper." He levelled the accusation severely, staring his opponent down.

"I am capable of simple instruction in arithmetic and grammar, I hope," replied Jasper.

"Oh, I daresay you are. I would have Jenny show you to your room, but you appear to have no belongings."

"I left them at the Crozier, behind the bar."

"Then I will have Lyle go and fetch them."

The pair of them stood, still in the lobby, neither knowing what should be done next.

"I suppose you will want to take some tea?" said Linney reluctantly.

"Do not trouble yourself. I will go and take a look at the music room, if I may."

"Of course. I will send Jenny, once your trunk is here."

Jasper left Linney to stew over his clearly unwelcome addition to the staff and made his way to the rehearsal room. It was near-dark; he lit the candles, as he had been permitted to in his last year at the school, and sat down at the old piano.

He played a note or two and found it in good tune. He needed something to dispel this weariness of heart, this sense of imprisonment. He needed something to take him out of Cloisterham. If only he had his new sheet music – he could be transported to the ballroom of Berlioz's imaginings, where the poet sought his love among the hectic light and swishing skirts. He recalled the opening bars from memory and played as much of it as he could, the shivering low notes contrasting with bright glissandi in the higher register in a way that pleased him more than he could articulate before taking the waltz at an elegant clip.

Soon enough he was reduced to playing such of the melody as he could recall with one hand, so he went back to the beginning and played it again.

"Who is…?"

The door opened and a female voice rang out over the dramatic early bars.

He looked up and stopped playing, a chord dying away beneath his exclamation of, "Diana."

"Oh," she said, and she was pale as milk, leaning back on the doorframe and putting a hand to her eyes. "Oh, dear lord."

"Good heavens, Diana, it is only me. What on earth is wrong?"

He was halfway to her when she flapped her hands out before her, staring like a girl possessed by a spirit.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping a tear away. "I am behaving like a mad person but, when I came along the corridor and heard you playing, my first thought was that you had come back and…"

"I have come back."

"You…have come back? I thought my brain played tricks on me. But it is you, isn't it?"

"Who else might it be?"

"Let me catch my breath. You have caught me so completely unawares…Papa never said a word of this."

"He did not know. It was all arranged at Dr Cross's instigation."

Diana went to sit on one of the desks, her skirts flaring out around her as she kicked her foot against one of the wooden legs.

"I must let you know," she said, "that I have only come to sit over here because it means I am too far away to slap you."

Jasper had been expecting some recrimination of this kind. He tried to form the conventional apologies for his failure to write since the autumn of his fifteenth year, but she stopped him with a fierce shake of the head.

"Don't you dare pretend to be sorry," she said. "You aren't a bit, and that's to be expected of young men. Mama says so. She says they grow into their hearts, while we are born with them entire. Have you grown into your heart? I don't think you have."

He looked at Diana, fifteen years old but still as passionately fierce as she had been at eleven. He should have kept up their correspondence; indeed, he could not quite remember why he had let it lapse.

"The heart is merely an organ of the body," he said. "But I am sorry I did not write for so long. I always intended to."

"Oh, intentions, intentions. The road to hell is paved with good ones."

"Perhaps I am already at the end of that road."

"Oh, John Jasper, I had forgotten how terribly morbid you are. How I have missed it. What was that fearful racket you were playing just now?"

"You do not know the Symphonie Fantastique?"

"I wonder how I managed to miss that amid the whirl of Cloisterham's frequent orchestral concerts of new music."

"Yes, I take your point. It was the piano transcription by Liszt, such as I remember of it. The second movement – the ball."

"There is a ball in a symphony? Mozart never included those."

"No, but this symphony tells a story," said Jasper, warming to the subject. "The artist's visions become entwined with the vision of his love, whom he sees everywhere – she is represented by a musical motif. Here." He went to the piano and played it. "It recurs throughout the piece – at the ball, in a rustic field and then also when, despairing of her, he poisons himself with opium and has visions of murdering her and witnessing his own execution. The artist finally finds himself in an toxic dream of a witches' sabbath, tormented by the distortion of his perfect love."

"The artist sounds like an ass," said Diana.

Jasper laughed, slightly shocked at having his dearly-held artistic pretensions thus debunked.

"Oh, but you see yourself as one of these romantic poet sorts, don't you?" she continued, blithely destructive of his carefully-created identity. "Look at your hair. It's so long now. And those whiskers. And that cravat. Next you'll be writing mad sonnets and running off to Italy."

Jasper, his cheeks fiery hot, replied by launching into the opening bars of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude. He knew Diana was just relieving her hurt feelings but all the same, could she not just go away and leave him in peace?

"Perhaps I will," he said loudly over the music. "After all, there is little to keep me in Cloisterham."

"Oh, stop," she said, hopping off the desk and coming to stand behind him. "What I mean to say is that I'm glad you're back."

He stopped playing and turned to smile at her.

"You are alone in that, I fear. _I_ am not glad I'm back."

"I'm sure Dr Cross is."

"Yes, perhaps."

"You will have to take me to hear this symphony of yours. We could go to London, to the Philharmonic Society."

"Yes, I'm sure your father would be delighted."

"Oh, don't mind him."

"I rather think I do."

There was a knock and Jenny, the maid he remembered from his schooldays, announced that his trunk was arrived and did he want to see his room?

"Lord," he whispered under his breath to Diana, his heart bumping fit to burst, "I thought that was him then."

He rose from the piano, ready to cross the room and join Jenny.

"Jasper," said Diana, putting a hand on his forearm.

He stopped and turned to her, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't you have an embrace for your old friend?"

"Oh." He hesitated, then ducked forward, giving her the briefest and most awkward of pecks on the cheek.

He could still hear her sighing from the corridor.

"How are you, Jenny?" he asked, climbing the stair after her.

"Very well, thanks, sir."

It was odd indeed to hear her call him 'sir'. Nobody had ever done so, except in mockery. It gave him pause and threw him off the line of enquiry he had intended.

It was in silence that they entered the little cubby at the far end of the younger boys' dormitory that was henceforth to be his home. The pair of them could barely fit in, particularly with the trunk that constituted the entirety of Jasper's possessions in the world standing in the middle of the floor.

"I'll make up the bed directly, sir," said Jenny, turning to go.

"Thank you," he said. "Jenny."

She stood in the doorframe, expectant.

"The last fellow. Why did he leave? Linney won't tell me."

Jenny tiptoed over and whispered, her eyes bright, "He was caught kissing."

"Kissing? Is that a crime?"

"It is when it's one of the boys, sir."

"Oh, I say. I see. Thank you, Jenny. I won't keep you longer."

"Don't tell no-one I told you, will you, sir?"

"Of course not."

She scurried off in a storm of starch, leaving Jasper to look from his forlorn little window out at the Choir School quad and the cathedral beyond, the limits of his world for the foreseeable future.


	19. Chapter 19

Evensong completed and the choristers fed and decanted into the Common Room for an hour's recreation before bed, Jasper was at liberty to pay a call.

Perhaps the hour was irregular, but he knew the Crisparkles welcomed all into their house at any time of day or night, and he was of a mind to take advantage of their hospitality rather than face the Linneys in their evening parlour.

The heavy curtains were drawn, admitting no chink of light to the dark November night, but they were surely at home. He knocked on the door and waited for their maidservant to answer.

"Good evening."

"Oh, master Jasper," she said, surprised to see him. Clearly the news had not spread to the furthest extent of the Close yet.

"I think you must now address me as Mr Jasper," he said. "For I am no longer at school but earning my living as men must do."

"To be sure?" she said, more surprised still. "Come out of the cold and I'll tell the master you are here to visit."

Jasper stood in the little hallway, soothed by its familiar homeliness. Mrs Crisparkle had a mania for hand-made knick-knacks and every surface was covered with some proudly embroidered doily or pincushion, while Biblical texts in pastel cross-stitch adorned the walls.

It was not the maid, but Mrs Crisparkle herself who appeared through the parlour door, her head cocked to one side, reminding him of an inquisitive sparrow.

"Good heavens, it _is _you," she said. "And I hear you have left school. Come in, come in and let us have the unvarnished truth of it."

"Is Mr Crisparkle at home?"

"Yes, he is, but his nose is hard to the grindstone on tomorrow's sermon, I'm afraid. I won't disturb him, though he will be sorry to have missed you. Well, sit down and I'll find you something to drink. What would you care for? Have you eaten?"

"Yes, I have had supper at the choir school. Oh, a port wine would be…thank you."

"At the choir school, you say?" She sat opposite him and leant forward so he could see the powder in her head of whitening hair.

"Yes. I am junior master there now. And Dr Cross has given the vacant lay clerk position to me as well."

"Then you are truly back in Cloisterham?"

"Truly," he said, with the ghost of a sigh.

There was a pause.

"Septimus always thought you would go to Oxford or Cambridge," she said, a hint of accusation in her words. "He said you had a better brain than dozens of the fellows he was up with."

"Then I hope he will not be too disappointed, madam," said Jasper. "But I am, above all other things, a musician, and they do not teach music there."

"No, that is so." She took a delicate sip of her drink. "So you have chosen to take up a musical career, here in Cloisterham."

"I would not go so far as to say I chose it. Fate seems to have done that on my behalf. But perhaps it is for the good."

"God has his plan for you, dear boy."

"And not only for me," said Jasper.

Mrs Crisparkle waited for an explanation.

"Do you see much of my nephew?" he continued. "I have missed him these years I have been away. He must be, I suppose, a fine fellow of about eleven years old now."

"He is at the preparatory school attached to the Kings, I believe."

"Is he? But he does not board there, I presume?"

"Why, yes he does."

"I thought he lived…"

"Oh, had you not heard? Such sad news. Mr Bud was taken by our Lord to join his beautiful wife, not six weeks since. He was unequal, poor man, to the task of living without her."

Jasper put down his glass, needing a moment of stillness to settle this new information in his mind.

"Mr Bud is dead," he murmured to himself. "And thus Ned has nobody to care for him."

"He is cared for at school, except when Captain Drood is home from Egypt."

Jasper turned thoughtful eyes to Mrs Crisparkle. "Christmas and summer," he said.

"Yes, you know it."

"I should pay him a visit. Do they allow visitors?"

"You must write and see."

"I think I will. Meg's boy, you know. My…nephew."

"Yes, dear, I know. It is perfectly understandable and good that you should go to him in the spirit of familial love. You have the opportunity to be a marvellous mentor to him."

"Oh, I don't know about _that_," said Jasper self-deprecatingly. "A penniless lay clerk and school usher has little to recommend him to impressionable youth."

"Do not be so modest. You strike me as a very serious-minded and responsible young man. Heaven knows there are not many of them to be found."

He nodded, taking the compliment.

"The Buds had a daughter," he mentioned, wondering about her fate.

"Yes, poor little orphan child. Rosa, named for her mother. Such a pretty thing, she is. It's a terrible, terrible pity."

"What has happened to her? I suppose she has left Cloisterham and gone to reside with some relative?"

"No, for there were none living. She is in the legal care of a guardian, a London lawyer whose name escapes me."

"Then she is in London now?"

"No, no. She is to live at the Nuns' House School."

"Oh. The Nuns' House. I see. She cannot be above eight years old."

Mrs Crisparkle put her handkerchief to her mouth, as if preventing indiscreet words from tumbling out of that orifice, then seemed to think better of her caution and removed it.

"There is a little story, no more than a rumour, and perhaps I should not repeat it, but it is so charmingly old-fashioned and romantic…and it pertains to your nephew."

"Oh?" Jasper sat forward, wondering what on earth Ned and romance could have in common.

"Before poor Mr Bud faded, he and Captain Drood put their heads together on the subject of their children's futures. They conceived a little daydream that perhaps one day Ned and Rosa might be wed."

"It is far from unlikely," said Jasper. "They have spent a great deal of time in each other's sphere. Although that can just as easily turn to antagonism as affection."

"Yes, but it is to be hoped not in this case, for I gather Captain Drood has mentioned the prospective attachment in his will."

"I'm sorry? You are saying that my brother-in-law has made it a condition of Edwin's inheritance that he marry the girl?" Jasper could not quite believe his ears. He knew Drood to be a controlling man, but surely this went beyond any normal remit.

"I do not know for certain, not being party to the signature of the document. But it is what I have heard. Oh, dear me, I should not have repeated this. You will think me a fearful old gossip."

"Not in the least, Mrs Crisparkle, I assure you. For the matter does concern me – not perhaps as nearly as it does my nephew but…"

"Yes, of course, you are the boy's uncle. Perhaps you might approach Captain Drood directly for particulars."

"Oh, he is no great supporter of mine. But it is such a strange story. It reminds one of the great medieval families, arranging political matches throughout the lands of Europe. Except, in this case, there is no clear political advantage to be gained from such an alliance."

"I am sure the late Mr Bud was merely anxious to see that his daughter might be settled and provided for, no matter what fate befell him. His wife's death gave him a premonition of the fragility of life. Who would have thought that healthy, happy girl would leave us so untimely?"

There was an awkward silence of swallowing and dimmed eyes, to which Jasper was no less a contributor than the lacy-capped lady.

"I must visit Ned," he reiterated, on recovering himself. "Does he know of this peculiar arrangement?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea. It is a matter between his father and him, now, Johnny. I would counsel you against interfering, unless he himself raises the subject."

Jasper smiled.

"Nobody has called me by that name in many a long year," he said.

"Well, and I should leave it off, I suppose, with you being such a great grown young fellow. Whiskers and all."

He put his fingers to them and smoothed them, a somewhat compulsive new habit he had and one which worsened in times of anxiety. This revelation about Ned and Rosa had thrown him into a sea of confusion. He felt he ought to find it mildly amusing and romantic, as the rest of Cloisterham seemed to, but he did not. He found it profoundly troubling, and he could not quite understand why.

Seeing from the Dutch clock on the mantel that it was nearly dormitory bed-time, he took his leave of Mrs Crisparkle, determining to visit Ned at the earliest opportunity and quiz him on the matter.

On the next Sunday, he took his new seat in the back row of the right hand side of the choir stalls. How odd it was to be here, ranged with the other grown men, singing the lowest line of the music instead of the highest. He felt that the sandy-haired boy who occupied his old place had stolen it and he could not quite prevent himself from giving the unfortunate child a baleful look whenever his eyes rested there. Anderton was his name – a new boy this September, only seven years old. Just as he had been when he had gone to school. Just as little Rosa Bud was now.

The coincidence struck at his heart and he felt a kind of bond with her. Was she here today? He looked out into the fast-filling pews. He knew that the Kings boys had their own chapel, so there would be no sign of Ned, but the Nun's House was not similarly furnished, to the best of his knowledge.

Sure enough, the redoubtable Miss Twinkleton led in a stream of Sunday-best-bonnets and ushered them into their designated rows. At the very rear of the file, holding the hand of Miss Tisher, was the smallest girl in the school, her blonde ringlets spilling unmistakably out of her little frilled headdress. That was her – to all intents and purposes, a miniature copy of her mother.

He looked for a sad countenance and redness of eye, but as the service progressed it became clear that little Rosa was far from overcome with grief. Indeed, she relieved the sombre atmosphere with whisperings and gigglings and even, at one point, appeared to produce a paper bag of lemon drops from her muff and pass them around. She was indulged and adored, it seemed, for even Miss Tisher could not bring herself to scold the little minx from the end of the pew.

Jasper found himself entertained by Rosa's antics and kept a surreptitious eye on her even during the psalm. She did not look his way and elicited little interest in the goings-on of the service in general. He wondered if she might recognise him if she did.

While his attention was distracted in frowning to death some merriment in the decani front row, an idea occurred to him, brilliant in its simplicity.

He would try to catch Mrs Twinkleton after the service.

This involved great haste in disrobing and knocking the boys into some semblance of order before shepherding them, with more threats than gentleness, back to the choir school, prior to running back to the steps of the cathedral.

A little out of breath, he located Miss Twinkleton, conversing with one of the aldermen, a great whale of a fellow, while Miss Tisher tried in vain to call the girls to order. But Sundays at church were the only opportunity the girls had to take note of what Cloisterham had to offer in the way of future husbands, and they took full advantage of it, striking poses that showed their figures to the best advantage, and turning their faces pointedly away from any young man they found sufficiently attractive to snub. Jasper himself, a novelty to the young ladies, drew his portion of notice and was severely ignored and turned away from by more than a few.

He was oblivious to it, though, having interest only in the smallest girl, who was too young for such feints and occupied herself in trying to jump as many of the cathedral steps as possible without breaking an ankle.

The alderman moved off, slow and stately as a ship in full sail, and Jasper seized his chance before Miss Twinkleton could proceed much further with her intention of calling order among her charges.

"Miss Twinkleton, I believe," he said, after the hasty clearing of his throat.

That venerable lady turned and stared - yes, stared - which Jasper felt to be rather poor manners.

"I am," she said, patting her skirts with the utmost dignity. "And you, sir?"

"My name is Jasper, ma'am, I am the new lay clerk in the cathedral choir and the junior master at the song school."

She took a lorgnette, the better to stare with full force, and peered through it. Her grey eyes looked huge and distorted through the glass.

"Junior indeed," she said with disdain. "You mean to introduce yourself, I suppose. Well, I am pleased to meet you. Our girls have little to do with your boys, however, so it is unlikely we will be thrown much into each other's society."

"No, that was not my chief purpose in engaging you, although of course little can be done by way of business until introductions have been made."

"Business?" The lorgnette quivered.

"I mean to ask if your girls study music at all."

"Music? Of course they do. What young lady worthy of the description does not play the piano?"

"Indeed, absolutely, I could scarcely agree more. Then, might I ask if you are satisfied with the provision you have?"

"Miss Standish is a most respectable and upstanding woman."

"Miss Standish? I take it she is also a fine musician?"

"She suits our purposes," prevaricated Miss Twinkleton and Jasper smiled, for he knew Miss Standish by reputation to be a lady of advancing years and deteriorating hearing.

"Then I shall not detain you," he said. "But should circumstances change, please keep in mind that I will offer my services as music master whenever you have need of one. I am a very accomplished pianist, Miss Twinkleton, and I have studied with some of London's―"

He broke off, unnerved by the way Miss Twinkleton had taken a step back, as if struck in the face.

"Good heavens," she breathed. "Oh dear me, no, that won't do. That won't do at all. Good day, young man."

She turned her back on him without waiting for return of the salutation and began fussing about her charges as if she feared Jasper's nearby presence might contaminate them.

Bemused, he watched as they trailed off, two by two, young Rosa looking back at him over her shoulder with a curious expression.

"Which of them is it?" The voice at his shoulder was heavy with world-weary resignation. Jasper was surprised out of pained reverie to find that it belonged to Diana Linney.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Which of the Nuns' House girls has taken your fancy?"

He glared at her then and clenched his fingers tighter about the rim of his hat, which he had not replaced on his head after his conversation with Miss Twinkleton.

"None of them," he said.

"Then Miss Twinkleton had nothing to fear after all?"

"What?"

"Well, really, Jasper. What headmistress of a girls' school with an ounce of sense would hire you as a music master? Do you have any idea how many young ladies elope with their music or dancing or drawing teachers?"

"Only in the romantic novels, surely."

"No. It happens in real life too."

She turned her heel on the gravelled Close, walking slowly towards the Choir School. Jasper walked at her side.

"You think Miss Twinkleton suspected me of nefarious designs on her young ladies?"

"Of course she did. Do you not have any?" Diana gave him such an accusatory look that Jasper bristled at the unfairness of it.

"I could not tell one Nuns' House girl from another," he protested. "You misjudge me. There is one in whom I take an interest―"

"Ha," said Diana with grim satisfaction. "Now we are coming to it."

"She is seven years old," he said emphatically. "And, by all accounts, betrothed to my nephew."

"Oh, the little orphan girl," exclaimed Diana. "The child bride. Truly?"

"So I am told."

"I had no idea you even had a nephew."

"Well, I do, and so you will understand me when I say that I am disposed to look upon this little girl as my niece, whether or not this strange engagement ever leads to a real marriage."

"Yes, I suppose I would too," mused Diana. "But did her father really make it a condition of her inheritance?"

"That is a question for the lawyers," said Jasper. "I intend to discover the answer."

"I thought you had no people at all," Diana persisted.

"None that cared for me," he said. "But I mean to visit my nephew, now that he is old enough to understand in what relation I stand to him."

"Is he seven too?"

"No, he is eleven. We will be good friends, I think, he and I."

"You need a friend," said Diana.

Jasper, passing through the portal of the Song School, could not but agree with her.


	20. Chapter 20

It was late into November by the time Jasper obtained permission from the headmaster of the preparatory school to visit his nephew. He left the choristers churning up a muddy playing field under the watchful eye of Mr Linney on the Wednesday half-holiday and took the short walk across the town to that august educational establishment.

En route, he passed the Nuns' House and, as had become his habit whenever he did so, he peered through the gates in the hope of catching a glimpse of young Rosa. He had an idea that the no-longer-nuns who resided in that one-time cloister often went for a walk at about this hour. Not that he could imagine Rosa walking. She would run everywhere, curls flying, eyes bright, heedless of Miss Twinkleton's admonitions to be more lady like.

No sighting could be obtained, however, and he resigned himself to seeing the unfurling Bud only at Sunday service, where he watched her fidget through his performances, oblivious of his eye upon her.

It was not his place to watch over Rosa Bud, though. He had a clutch of small boys for whom he performed that role and even Linney admitted (albeit grudgingly) that he did it well. In truth, he was exceptionally well-served by his reputation – the older choristers remembered the tale, now passed into legend, of his attacking an older boy (some said a master) with a toasting fork (some said a knife). It had been much embroidered and embellished through the ten intervening years, being one of the stories most repeated in the dormitories after candle-snuff, and had had a score of other, quite untrue, adjuncts added to it until the name of Jasper had become synonymous with something so intensely sinister it had not its equal in the entire bestiary of hell.

He barely needed to raise his voice in the classroom, and all orders were followed with a nervous devotion to duty Jasper found surprising, if gratifying. It wasn't until much later that he learned of the profound and ecstatic dread in which he was held by his young charges – something which he mildly regretted at first but soon recognised as rather a blessing than a curse. As a consequence, he developed very quickly an air of gravitas rarely seen in one of his years and people were often surprised to hear that he was some distance from the legal age of majority.

Naturally serious-minded, he could strike an observer as severe in demeanour, but as he walked up the driveway to the prep school he tried to affect a more light-hearted appearance, having no wish to frighten his nephew.

In the event, he need not have worried. Edwin Drood was not of the sort to frighten easily and he had an easy air of well-bred entitlement that caused Jasper to suspect he sailed through life without a care for anything that was not in his immediate sights.

The weather being poor, they were given tea in the masters' sitting room while Ned tried his best not to spend too much time looking out wistfully towards the playing fields, where some form of skirmish involving a ball was taking place.

"You do remember me, I suppose?" said Jasper, trying to recall when their last meeting had been.

"Yes, of course, uncle Jack."

"Oh, you needn't call me 'uncle'," said Jasper, with an inward wince at the term, more for its factual inaccuracy than its implication of seniority. "It seems but a few days ago that I was your age."

"How old are you?"

"I am seventeen."

"I asked after you once and Pa said it was not likely we should meet again, for you had gone to seek your fortune in London."

Jasper's smile was melancholy. "Alas, my fortune was not to be found there – at least, not yet. I have returned to my old calling at the cathedral."

"So you are still a musician. I say, I wish I could play the piano. I've tried it, ever so many times, but my fingers won't do as I tell 'em. Can't sing a note either."

He said this with an air of pride that needled Jasper.

"No man can be the master of everything," he said. "You will inherit an engineering business, I suppose."

"Yes. And that's not all. When I am grown and ready to sail for Egypt, I take with me a bride. What do you say to that, Jack?"

"So it's true?" he said. "I had heard a rumour of that nature."

"Quite true. It's in Bud's will and Pa's all for it and says he'll put it in his too."

Jasper sipped his tea thoughtfully.

"You don't mind, then?" he asked, putting the cup aside.

"Mind?"

"Having a life chosen for you. Your work, your wife. Some would object."

"Why should I object? It's only Rosa, after all, not some strange girl."

"She is pretty."

"I suppose so." He looked out of the window again. "Dash it, that reminds me. It's her birthday next week. I ought to get her a little something. What do girls like, Jack?"

"Gloves," he said unthinkingly, recalling the raptures Diana had gone into on being given a new pair a few days earlier.

"Gloves? She will be eight. I thought a doll..."

"Yes, yes, no doubt you are right. I had forgotten how young she still is. I suppose she has a guardian now?"

"Yes, some lawyer fellow in London. I say, I shall write Pa that you've come back to Cloisterham – perhaps he'll invite you for Christmas."

"No," said Jasper, so harshly that Ned's bright blue eyes opened wide. "No," he said more gently. "Don't mention me. I am not a favourite with him and he might forbid our meeting."

"I say, do you really think so?" Ned was clearly astonished. "But why?"

"I fear I have said too much already," said Jasper. "Suffice it to say that he never held me in high esteem and, after your mother died, he was eager to sever all links with me."

"How curious. It is not like him."

"Well, it was some time ago now and perhaps best forgotten. Let us agree to be friends and leave your father out of it, shall we? Can you keep a secret?"

Edwin wrinkled his nose. "I confess I do not know. I have never tried."

Jasper tried to fight back a wave of – what was it? Antipathy? Jealousy? Guilt? In this one sentence, young Ned had laid bare the vast difference in their dispositions. He had never tried to keep a secret, and Jasper was made of them.

"Well, if you can try, I promise you some jolly half-holidays," he said with forced brightness.

"That would be super. I tag along with friends when Pa's not in town but it will be much more fun to go around with you. I say, we could go boating. In the summer, I mean."

Rosa Bud's calamitous death did not seem to have affected her young charge very much, Jasper thought.

"Yes," he said, with a shadowy smile. "Boating." He let the silence hang until it grew uncomfortable. "Do you remember much of your mother?" he asked.

"Not a good deal," said Ned, apparently at ease with the question. "I was a very little boy when she died. No more than five years old."

"I recall the night you were born."

"Do you really?"

"I was there. In the house, I mean, not at her bedside."

"Oh." Ned cast about him for something to say but nothing appeared to present itself.

"Yes. Well, I suppose you do not play chess?"

"Oh, yes, I do, but not well. Should you like a game?"

"Why not?"

The hour passed tranquilly enough, despite Ned's questioning, at their parting, whether the secrecy was _really _necessary.

"Probably not," said Jasper, hopeful of reassuring him. "But it would be a great favour to me and a token of what I hope will be a long and fruitful friendship."

"Very well," Ned had said uneasily. "My lips shall be sealed. Now I must get to town for those pestiferous gloves."

Jasper walked back in dull drizzle, his mind full of the strange compact between his nephew and the little Nuns' House girl. He could not find it in himself to feel much warmth towards the boy but on this point he held some sympathy. Surely he deserved a freer choice than he had been given? As for Rosa's girl, he could not imagine that her mother would have approved. Perhaps this was the meaning of his dream – this was what he could save her from. But how?

He was still deep in his ponderings as he crossed the song school courtyard, almost bumping into Diana, who ran out to greet him.

"Where have you been?" she demanded. "There is a fuss about one of the boys bringing white mice into the dormitory and nobody will own up to it. Pa is making them all sit in the schoolroom until a confession is forced. Poor boys."

"I went to visit my nephew," said Jasper. "And it will be Bingley, you may count upon it."

"Was your nephew well?"

"In very good health," replied Jasper, entering the lobby to be told by Mrs Linney that his presence was required in the schoolroom. He turned to Diana. "Are the mice still alive?"

"I think so." She touched his elbow, arresting his progress along the corridor. "Don't be hard on the poor lad, will you?"

"Why is everyone convinced I am some kind of ogre?" he complained. "First the boys, now you."

"I don't think you are," she said gently. "I think the opposite, in fact. But I know what Pa will expect of you, that's all."

He nodded, sighing. "Yes, so do I."

In the school room, all his younger boys were ranged on their forms, looking like miniature pictures of woe.

"Ah, Mr Jasper," said Linney, rising from his desk. "You have returned. We have a miscreant in our midst, but he will not be a man and stand up to confess his misdeed."

"So I have heard," said Jasper, looking along the row and fixing his gaze on Bingley, a messy-haired eight-year-old with arms resolutely folded. "The more practical element is solved," continued Jasper, "for cook tells me she has fed the mice to the kitchen cat."

His untruth was rewarded by the sight of Bingley's face crumpling while the other boys looked anxiously along the row at him.

"Ah," said Linney with fulsome satisfaction. "I think our mystery is solved. Bingley, get up."

There were tears on the boy's cheeks as he rose and trudged towards the front desk.

"The rest of you are dismissed," said Linney, snapping his fingers. "Well, I will leave him to you, Mr Jasper," he said, once the room was empty. "If you wish, you may use my study."

"Thank you," said Jasper, then he turned his eyes to Bingley. "Follow me," he said.

Bingley was sobbing in earnest by the time the door of Linney's study shut behind him.

"I didn't mean any harm," he blurted. "I swear."

Jasper took his seat at Linney's desk, enjoying the mantle of authority that fell upon him as if from on high.

"Bingley, stop crying. There is no need."

"But they're de-ea-ead," he hiccupped mournfully.

"They are not. Well, they may be now. I don't know for certain."

Bingley screwed the tears from his eyes and stared.

"You said ―"

"It was a trick, Bingley. A ploy to flush you out of hiding. And it worked, for now you are here."

"Sir, I only meant to keep them in a box under my bed. I was going to feed them with leftover bits of cheese. Nobody would have been inconvenienced."

"There is a rule, Bingley, about the bringing of live animals into the school. You know this. Or do you not?"

Bingley nodded and shook his head, as if unsure of the correct answer and thus doubling his chances of scoring it.

His only verbal response to the question consisted of fresh tears and a heartfelt, "Please don't beat me, sir, I couldn't bear it."

Jasper watched him dispassionately for about half a minute before saying, "It's all right, Bingley. I'm not going to hurt you."

The snivelling stopped.

Bingley, lip still quivering, said, "Aren't you, sir?"

Jasper shook his head.

"We must make Mr Linney think differently, though, so if you could feign some difficulty in taking your seat at dinner, it would be appreciated."

Bingley simply stared, open-mouthed.

"And, of course, this must remain strictly between ourselves." He looked at his pocket watch. "If I judge correctly, eavesdroppers will be arriving at the study door in a minute or so. How are your acting skills?"

"I…don't know, sir."

"Well, I shall need to hear that good, clear treble voice of yours raised in agony. Do you think you can do it?"

Bingley was so thunderstruck that Jasper almost wanted to laugh.

"Go and stand behind that chair," he said, pointing.

Bingley thus stationed, Jasper put a cushion upon the seat, then withdrew the dreaded rod from its familiar resting place in the corner of the study.

Bingley watched all with eyes round and stunned.

Jasper looked at the door, then raised his voice.

"Now, Bingley, I am going to make sure that your understanding of our rules is suitably reinforced. Bend over."

He waved his hand at Bingley as if giving him dispensation to take no notice of a word he said.

Then he raised the cane, swished it through the air and brought it to land with a satisfying thwack upon the cushion. Dust flew up and Bingley obliged with a most realistic yell.

"Very good," said Jasper. "Five times more, then."

Each time the rod fell, Jasper imagined it brought to bear upon the flesh of all those who had despised or thwarted him. But none of those were boys. No boy deserved this treatment.

Except perhaps Edwin Drood.

Later in the Linney's drawing room, Diana would not speak to him.

"Come to the piano, Diana," he invited, thinking he understood the reason for her displeasure. "We might play that duet you wanted to practise."

"I'd sooner not," she said primly.

"It would oblige me most excessively," he said, at which she seemed to thaw, coming to sit beside him.

"I don't often like to play with brutes," she said, once the music was loud enough to shut out inquisitive ears.

"I think you misjudge me," he said.

"Misjudge you? We could hear that poor boy's screams from the Close."

"He has a marvellously penetrating voice, doesn't he? He'll be a soloist in a year or two."

"How can you make pleasantries about it? You are cruel."

"Diana, I did not beat him."

"What?"

She suspended her playing for a moment before taking it up again.

"How can you lie about it, Jasper? It is quite plain that you did."

"Believe me, Diana, I am the last man to beat a child, having had it too often done to me. Only the most hardened of young rogues could induce me to do such a thing. Bingley did nothing to offend me, and so I was loth to punish him."

"Are you quite mad? We all heard it."

"Yes, but did you see it?"

"Of course not."

"Bingley can scream to order, you know. And I can deliver the soundest of canings to a cushion. It's rather enjoyable, actually. I can recommend it for the relief of frustration. I might make a habit of it."

Diana burst out laughing, drawing the attention of the senior Linneys to the piano.

"Music is such a joy, is it not?" said Mrs Linney sententiously, but her eyes were as sharp as a sparrowhawk's. "Diana, come away from the piano. I fear one of my headaches is starting."

She left the room shortly afterwards, bidding Diana follow her.

Jasper played on, hoping to evade the dread necessity of conversation with Linney, but he was unsuccessful in his endeavour, for a cough from the fireside armchair was swiftly succeeded by, "Might I have a quiet word, Jasper?"

With a sigh, Jasper stilled his fingers on the keys and turned on the piano stool to face his senior colleague.

"Mr Linney?"

"This is a delicate subject, so please excuse me if I speak out of turn, but it has come to my notice that Diana is really rather…taken with you…since your return from London."

"We have always been good friends, Mr Linney, if you will recall."

"Indeed, yes. But you are both older now and I fancy I see something in her eye when she looks at you. Believe me, if I see that same look in your eye, directed at her, I will be most displeased."

Jasper swallowed, fighting back the urge to make a sharp and curse-heavy reply.

"I have no intentions of any kind, beyond friendship, with regard to Diana," he said.

"I am glad to hear it. She is a determined girl, not to say obstinate at times, and if she sets her heart on a thing, there can be no stopping her. You will do nothing to encourage her, sir, or you may find yourself without a place in very short order. Do I make myself well understood?"

"Perfectly well," said Jasper.

"Good. I hope so. The mice are destroyed, I take it?"

"Oh. Yes," said Jasper vaguely, the change of subject leaving him a little perplexed.

"You did say so."

"Yes, I did, didn't I? Will you excuse me? I should see to the boys' bedtime."

Linney waved in dismissal and Jasper went to the kitchen to investigate the situation vis a vis the mice. They were still in their cardboard box, scrabbling about in a corner, cook not having found a moment to decide their fate as yet.

"May I take these?" he asked politely.

"Aye, get rid on 'em any way you like," said cook, up to her elbows in the sink.

"I will," he said, and he took them upstairs to his tiny bedroom. He was not especially fond of mice, but it had become the guiding principle of his life to do that of which Mr Linney would disapprove.

"There, little fellows," he said, crumbling half a dry biscuit into their box. "You can keep me company. Heaven knows, it is hard enough to find elsewhere."


End file.
